I lifted up a little and looked at the wound on his chest, the perfect crescents of my teeth marking his flesh. They could have matched my dental records to it, the bite was that clean. I felt a little swell of pride at the mark, but it was closely followed by guilt that I’d made him bleed.
I licked the wound almost subconsciously. Rouen’s hand under my chin stopped me. He shook his head.
“Leave it. I don’t want it to heal. I like it there.”
I was about to argue that I wouldn’t be able to heal it, but the blood had stopped dripping and the open wounds had healed over a little. It would still bruise, but it was definitely partially healed.
I had done that.
I could feel the freak out surging up from my chest, but Rouen just pulled me up his body, his semi soft cock sliding out of me, making me give an involuntary hum of pleasure.
He didn’t stop until we were cheek to cheek. “It will be okay. You are still you, just with a few extras. You are everything now.”
He kissed me gently, then tucked my head under his chin. The steady thumping of his heart calmed my bubbling hysteria.
In the haze between wakefulness and sleep, it occurred to me that Hope and I probably weren’t identical twins anymore. We’d always been emotionally different, but physically the same. I wasn’t sure that was the case now.
Chapter Seven
I looked at the outside of the worn-down mechanics shop. The sign was in French, it’s swirling font almost too elegant for such a manly shopfront. And for the horror that went on behind its rusting roller door.
I’d never seen the outside of the shop, only the basement where Hope had been held, and the top of the stairs where Luc decapitated the door guard. My heart thundered in my chest. I didn’t want to go in, but it wasn’t a rational emotion. There was no one in there. The doors were covered in police tape, Hope was safe home in Manhattan, and I was surrounded by some of the meanest beings to ever walk the mortal plane. But PTSD wasn't a rational beast.
“We’ll split up, just in case someone has decided to come back to visit their old haunts. Rouen is with me,” Naz said, his eyes covered with dark shades. His hangover must be a real bitch. I bit my lip so I didn’t grin.
Obviously, Rouen was with him. He’d have to pry Romanus off my ass with a crowbar. I had my swords crisscrossed in a double holster over my back, and I stroked the chest strap. It was so beautiful.
“We’ll take the back,” Romanus said, stepping in front of me and assuming the lead. I could tell he didn't like leaving my back unprotected by the stiff way he held his head, trying to keep his eyes on what was in front of him, but an ear for sneak attacks at the rear. He seemed to be feeling the loss of Rouen in our little ménage.
He halted us at the padlocked backdoor, listening for Naz and Rouen’s confirmation that they were in position.
I drew my sword and held it loosely at my side. It was perfectly balanced to my hand, and I wondered again how they could get it so right without having me there with the swordsmith. Romanus raised a brow at me, probably because I was making goo goo eyes at my swords. He must have guessed my thoughts. “He makes them himself.”
“What?”
“Rouen. He makes the blades himself. I helped him source the material for the hilt, but the blade is all him.”
I shook my head at the impossibility of the statement. The swords must have taken days to create, let alone all the fancy swirls and decoration.
“Not impossible when you have superhuman strength and claws that can pierce medieval armor like a tin can. He saw the swords on your wall and wanted to make you a set. He knows how you hold yourself, how you move, your grip, just from watching you do day to day things. He’s pretty good at the art, even though we’ve no need for swords personally.” He gave a soft smile, one I realized was almost exclusively reserved for the other gargoyle. “He’s a little taken with you.”
I let out an embarrassed laugh, my cheeks reddening. I was a little smitten with Rouen, too.
“In position.” Naz’s voice came over the comm. “Three. Two. One. Go, go.”
Romanus pulled back a foot and kicked the bottom of the door. It crumpled like an origami swan. We weren’t even pretending to be stealthy today.
The interior of the mechanics shop was dark, the hulls of car bodies lying abandoned around the wide, empty space. An office in the rear corner was also dark.
Romanus cocked an ear to the side. “All clear. No one here.”
We stood next to a heavy metal door. I recognized that door. I looked at the ground, at the large stain that could have been rust in a mechanics workshop, but I knew it wasn’t.
Naz and Rouen peeled out of the shadows at our backs. “All clear at the front too.” Naz looked at the door, and then at my face. “You okay?”
I nodded and schooled my features. “I’m good.”
He rested a hand on the center of my back. “All three of us can feel your fear and pain, Estrella. You don’t need to lie. No one will stop you from doing what you need to do.”
“As long as it doesn't put her in the path of actual harm,” Romanus clarified quickly.
Naz nodded. “Of course.”
I sucked in a deep, calming breath. I was fine. I repeated it out loud for the guys, and none of them contradicted me despite the swirling mess of my thoughts.
Naz opened the doors and went down into the darkened basement first. A small torch clutched in his offhand, his weapon raised. Neither Rouen nor Romanus needed a torch, their night vision was perfect. I didn’t even think to bring a torch. Rouen went after Naz, but not before turning to me.
“You won’t need light,” he murmured. “But put a hand on my back if it will make you feel better.” We stepped into the darkened stairway, and I sucked in a breath, my hand clutching the back of Rouen’s shirt like a scared girl in a haunted house.
The light of Naz’s flashlight flicked off halfway down, and as I looked around, I understood why.
My night vision was exceptional. I could see every step and every groove in the rough rock walls around us. I still held onto Rouen’s shirt though. The contact calmed the thudding of my heart, so I’d pretend it was because I couldn't see for a little bit longer. I felt the vibration of Romanus’ steps on the stairs, although his movements were almost silent considering both he and Rouen were huge.
For a moment, no one moved toward the light switch on the wall as we looked for threats in the dark.
“All clear,” Romanus said again. I didn’t scrabble around for the light switch like I would have done a month ago. I saw it with perfect clarity.
“Close your eyes first. The light can hurt a little,” Rouen said loud enough that I wasn’t sure if it was directed at Naz or me. I did what he said, and then flipped the switch.
Squinting, I let a little light in one eye, and then the other. Not too bad at all. Sure, pain from the light speared my brain, but no worse than staring at the sun when you’re hungover. Not that I would do anything that dumb.
Lux, had been liaising with the police in Geneva after Hope’s abduction, trying to track down the culprits through the proper channels while I snuck around the shadows. One look at the basement told me my way was going to be more productive.
I’d expected the basement to be cleared out, dust from the CSI guys coating the room, and every loose thing bagged, tagged and in an evidence locker somewhere.
What I found just told me that the traffickers had a cop, or maybe a whole team, on the payroll.
The place was basically untouched. Papers were strewn across the floor as if someone had grabbed armloads in a hurry. A metal waste paper basket held ashes in the center of the room. Hope’s blood still stained the cement and I resisted the urge to throw up. In the light of day, when my whole focus wasn’t on Hope’s broken body, the basement told a horror story.
Dirty mattresses were pushed against the back wall and rings and chains were drilled deep into the stone above them.
They had
n’t even bothered to clear out the place, they had been so sure that it wouldn’t come back to bite them. It stunk of system deep corruption.
Naz must have been making the same deductions. “Spread out. Get everything you think looks even a little relevant. And someone clean up Hope’s blood from the floor. I want no trace of her in this place.”
No one argued. I walked to the burnt papers in the bin. I sifted through it with my fingers, most of it charred beyond redemption. The edge of a flyer caught my attention. It was a hand-written time and address, for what I don’t know. It looked photocopied. Charlie would be able to track down the address. Everything else in the bin was toast, including what appeared to be some kind of ledger book. I picked up the remains of the heavy leather book and lamented that none of it was salvageable. Not a single name.
Romanus was pouring bleach over the dried pool of blood. He stopped, sniffed, and walked a foot to the left, pouring more bleach over what appeared to be unmarked concrete.
Feeling my gaze, he turned. “There was a drop over here. None of it should remain.” He seemed just as adamant as Nazir had been, although he didn’t have the same personal connection to Hope. Well, except through me. He was being thorough because he was just a decent, uh, gargoyle being.
Naz held a Ziploc bag that he’d pulled from the same place as the torch I guess and held it out for my burned flyer. There were a few other bits and pieces in that bag, but not as much as I would have liked.
We worked down there for an hour, gathering what we could, looking under every upended crate, and even testing for loose stones. I avoided the dirty mattresses, and the guys went through the evidence over there. Rouen’s eyes were hard, like polished stones, and his face promised hellish vengeance. It was the first time he’d ever truly looked like a demon to me.
When Naz was happy we’d gotten everything we could from the room, we switched off the light and climbed back up the stairs.
When I stood in front of the workshop again, I had the overwhelming urge to burn it down too.
I was going to burn their whole world down.
I never thought I’d say this, and it almost felt un-American, but I was sick of pizza. I would seriously maul one of Papa’s ratatouilles. My mouth literally watered at the thought, and my chest ached.
I missed my family. I hadn’t seen any of my parents in months, with the exception of Mom and Eli, since they’d been on a six-month Aid Tour of the Pacific Islands. I missed Sunday night family dinners, with everyone there, when Valery would make something delicious and ridiculously complicated, and Oz would put on his themed music playlist for the night. Lux would talk to me about work, and Ri would ask me about who I was dating. Hope, Sam and Tolli would talk work until Mom would put her foot down about shop talk at the table.
Sometimes Clary and Adnan, or even Ace and Luc, would be there, and we’d laugh, talk and drink wine. The whole thing was almost wholesome and idyllic. Well, as wholesome as you could be when you were the child of polyamorous parents. And kind of pseudo children of the Devil and his Fallen Angel consort. Okay, so we weren’t ever going to be a Norman Rockwell painting, but we were happy.
I inserted my guys into the picture in my mind. I had no worries about Naz and Charlie; they already had a place at our table. It wasn’t a struggle to see Romanus talking about old times with Lux, or Rouen talking weird eighties pop culture references with Oz.
Telling my parents that I accidentally got Naz semi-executed and then became a Gargoyle Queen to save his life was going to be an interesting conversation to say the least. Not that they had any right to judge, considering they’d all been the immortal embodiments of the seven deadly sins, and Mom had been their ‘Redeemer’ once upon a time, before Hope and I came along.
I felt eyes on me, and I looked up to see Naz staring at me from across the table, his head slightly cocked to the side.
“Okay?”
I smiled and ran my foot up the inside of his leg under the table. He gave me a hot look and a half grin but chased the expression away with a mock stern scowl.
He held up a crumpled-up piece of paper, with a scrawled name and time. It wasn’t like the burnt flyer I’d found. It said “Lucy, 1:45.”
“A mark?”
He stared at the paper as if it might whisper to him its secrets. “Maybe. Charlie, any luck with the burnt paper?”
Charlie made a non-committal noise, his fingers still working the keyboard. “I might have something.”
He pulled up what appeared to be a message board on one of the social media platforms. There was a post that looked like it was designed by a My Little Pony on a bad LSD trip. It advertised a secret rave at a place in an industrial district. Why would they have this? Why would they bother to burn it?
“Hunting ground,” Romanus murmured as he came back into the room. I hadn’t even noticed he’d left the table. He placed chicken salad in front of me, with a whole bunch of roasted vegetables mixed through. It looked amazing, and it was exactly what I had felt like.
I beamed up at him. The corners of his mouth turned up in a smile, and he leaned down until his lips were close to my ear. “Eat, my Queen.” He kissed my cheek and went over to look at the rave poster on Charlie's screen.
Romanus never called me Queen outside of the bedroom, unlike Rouen, who I think had forgotten my real name. I ate a cube of roasted squash and didn’t bother to hide the moan. It was delicious.
Four sets of eyes shifted to me, and I shrugged. It was too damn good.
Romanus cleared his throat. “It's a hunting ground for young, inebriated humans. Easy pickings. Crowded like that, no one will notice if you separate the weaker ones from the herd.”
He was right. Normal nightclubs were a hotspot for crime. Secret, underground rave parties were basically a criminal playground.
“Are there anymore? Any coming up?” I asked Charlie.
He looked back through the message board. “It looks like they have them once every three weeks. There's another one in two days. Makes sense. They wouldn’t be able to take too many at once otherwise it would be suspicious as hell and the police would be all over it, so better to have them frequently.”
Naz growled. “I don't think they are too worried about the cops.”
“Even so, in this day and age, it would be easy to make the connection between people going missing and the parties. So, do they take them from there, or just wait and snatch them later? Or a bit of both?”
We all stared at the screen in silence. The whole idea of kids being led to a meat market for human traffickers made my stomach sour. But we were going to fix it, one blood-drenched way or another.
“I guess there's only one way to find out. Get out your glow sticks and put on your dancing shoes. We’re going to a rave.”
Chapter Eight
The steady thump of trance music pushed against my chest like another heartbeat. The warehouse was so packed that it smelled of sweat, cigarette smoke and fish. The fish smell was because we were in the currently closed fish market building. It wasn’t a pleasant smell.
The other rave goers didn't seem to mind. The flashing lights and electric music seemed to have them in a fugue, their bodies bouncing and writhing almost as one.
We walked in separately, because together we stood out. Surrounded by my guys, I looked like a royal princess surrounded by her bodyguards. Interesting idea, but stealth was what we needed.
Though, even by himself, Romanus stood out. He looked like sex. Golden, hot sex. You couldn't even see his dual colored eyes in here, but I’d taken one look at him before we left and felt my panties dampen beneath my too short skirt.
Actually, they’d all looked sexy, dressed in varying black clothes, mostly dark tight jeans and tight shirts. I’d almost abandoned my vendetta and suggested we stay home for an orgy. The idea of having all four guys at once made my brain fuzz over, so I shook my head. I needed my mind in the game, not imagining Charlie’s head between my thighs.
I w
as dressed for temptation tonight. I was in a short, black leather skirt that showed off my long smooth legs, and my tiny top left nothing to the imagination. I’d bought it at some little boutique in a rush yesterday. I’d asked for the most tempting, slutty thing they had in stock. They had not disappointed. It was basically a small strip of slinky gold fabric held together by loose chains. I may as well have gone out with a sign saying, “pick me, I’m premium merchandise”.
I moved through the crowd, only a little worried that one of the chains would get caught on something and break, leaving my breasts hanging in the wind. Anonymous hands took advantage of the forced closeness to pet my skin or squeeze my ass. Normally I would junk punch someone for having the audacity to take something not freely offered, but I had a bigger fish to catch than some horny dude-bro who’d had too much tequila.
I got to the bar and casually looked around. I could see Romanus, who stood a foot over most people in the crowd, and he was standing near the rear exit, his back to the wall. Between one blink and the next, he seemed to fade into the shadows of the room. Well, that was a neat trick.
Rouen wasn’t trying to hide. He was on the floor dancing with some serious skill. People crept closer to him as he danced, his feet moving at a speed I couldn’t even fathom and his head thrown back in pure joy. Seemed my Beta loved to dance. I wasn’t surprised. From what I could tell, Rouen just loved to live. Soon, so many people swamped him that I lost sight of him, but not before he held my gaze and winked. He was partying, but he was watching my back too. I couldn’t see Naz anywhere, but I wasn’t worried.
Someone leaned on the temporary bar beside me, and I gave him a coy smile. Charlie smiled back.
We’d decided it was best if Charlie pretended to pick me up at the rave, so someone was close enough to have my back. And Charlie was the least physically terrifying.
The Unrepentant- Part Two Page 6