by Megan Starks
She was eager to leave.
It was Shade that answered. “If we want to catch a lead on your aunt, we should start with the Black District. Vice. I can take us there. But we’ll have to pass through the Red District to make it.”
“Violence,” Beast rumbled.
Shade nodded. “So stay alert. Neither district will be anything like this. Luckily, or maybe unluckily, we’ve landed on the outskirts of the city, in Solitude.”
Somehow without either of them saying it, she knew, maybe from a long forgotten memory, a childhood story she’d been told—they’d landed in the White District.
The city here was like a multifaceted jewel. Each side a different color, a different desire. The longer you gazed at one, the more you succumbed to its pull. In the periphery of her vision she could see it, the alleyways she hadn’t noticed before that would shimmer and disappear if she stared directly at them. They sucked at her, even now.
She swallowed against a dry throat.
The depths of the alleyways didn’t taper into shadows. Instead they were diffused with a soft, white fog. If she’d wandered off, in no time at all, she would have faded into the mist, forgetting all about Beast. About Shade.
“Let’s go.” The words rasped out, tasting of fear.
Oh, yes, she was most definitely afraid. She needed to be if she was going to survive.
By the time they reached the Red District, a scarlet moon gleamed against a murky, velvet sky, devoid of stars.
Beast had said once he’d stay with her until the blood moon. She’d assumed he’d meant one on Earth. But here they were, faced with a world and a moon wet with dripping blood. Did this mean their time together would soon be coming to an end? And if so, was she ready for it?
She glanced over her shoulder to assure herself he was still there, galloping behind. Wind whipped at her hair, her eyes. They hadn’t stopped in hours, keeping to a slow but steady pace that Beast could match.
Unlike the White District, the Red District was filled with bodies. Both writhing and still. Corpses lined the street like guardrails, and groups of demons fought around them. The streetlights had been shattered, casting the area in the sickly glow of the moon. Glass and blood glittered on the ground.
There were no glossy, rippling skyscrapers here, only squat, chipped brick buildings splattered with gore and graffiti.
The Red District was like taking a ride through the apocalypse, and she was eager to leave it. Thankfully, a few miles back, they’d entered a span of thoroughfare that was quiet, granting the three of them a temporary reprieve.
Beast flicked his teal-green eyes to her face, offering her an easy, languid smile before once more scanning the sides of the street, searching for the first hints of coming trouble.
“Have Half-blood’s back.”
His shirt had soaked through, and his mane had separated into dark tendrils, slicked with sweat. His nostrils flared and his chest pumped like an oil drill, but he hadn’t slowed, not once since they’d started, charging swiftly behind the Harley with endless endurance.
She was humbled to call such a magnificent creature her friend.
“We’ll stop soon!” she hollered for assurance.
Her hands gripped low on Shade’s hips, and for a moment she was content to forget their grisly surroundings, enjoying only the pulse between her legs and the sharp wind snapping through her hair.
Like this, she could almost pretend they were on a road trip.
“Not here we won’t,” Shade corrected. “Not yet.”
Then the blood-stained brick walls of the city came rushing back to her, and she was once more on alert. Adrenaline had been surging through her for so long, she’d grown jittery, itching to shoot, to stab something. To bite until she tasted blood.
“How much farther?” she asked.
How long would they barrel through Violence?
His voice was almost lost to the roar of the engine. “Until we get there.”
“Damn it, Shade,” she shouted back at him. “For once, could you answer me straight?”
Shade tensed beneath her palms. His attention diverted to their left, where as if by a sweep of magic, a woman appeared, looming, washed from the darkness by the Sportster’s headlight.
Dark-skinned with pointed ears and a spiked, pink Mohawk, she leaned bare shoulder blades against the rough brick wall. As they neared, she straightened, intent thrumming through her wiry limbs. They should have swerved or stopped. Instead, the moment merely stretched. It swelled like a gasp, like a bubble bloomed in Gisele’s chest. Then it popped, burst beneath the weight of the woman’s viciousness. Her frenzy, unleashed.
The woman leaped for them, a shrill cry cracking through the air.
Thick, silvered chains were wrapped around her fists, the ends dangling loose and jangling, nearly hooking in the Sportster’s wheel spokes as she punched and flailed at Shade.
Gisele flinched. She had a split-second to grab Shade tighter before he leaned hard and whipped the bike around, and then around again, skirting away from their attacker with the high-pitched squeal of rubber on pavement.
More bodies joined the fray, leaking forward like long shadows.
“Stop them! Nab the bike!” a man yelled.
“Beast, leave them!” Shade shouted back.
The minotaur had engaged the gang—a small group of five—goring the woman through her rib cage. He ripped a man with a metal baseball bat to the ground, stomping hard enough to crack a femur. He kicked the bat away and turned on the others.
“Beast!” Gisele cried, alarmed as they pulled farther and farther from him. “Stop! Don’t leave him!”
She beat at Shade’s back. The strikes came soft at first, but they soon grew in intensity. She punched hard enough that she hoped he bruised.
“We can’t go back. If he’s lost to the thirst, he’ll attack us next. Ow, Gisele, stop.”
But she didn’t, her fear and fury at the thought of abandoning Beast pushing her to punch him harder, this time in the ribs. She surged forward, climbing his back. She wrapped an arm around his throat and squeezed.
He choked and the bike wobbled dangerously. She bit her bottom lip hard enough to taste blood, licked it, and liked the taste. More. She pulled harder, cutting the air from his lungs.
He tapped frantically at her arm, but she didn’t ease the sleeper hold.
“Go back,” she snarled into his ear.
The bike squealed as he jerked it to the side of the street. In an instant, he’d hauled them off. She rode his back, still choking him as the bike clunked to the ground, its metal scraped and ruined against the asphalt.
He tapped her arm harder. His claws dug into her skin. Still, she held on.
Finally, he tossed her forward over his head to dislodge her death grip. She gasped, heart hammering in her throat, muscles tensing in anticipation of a jarring impact, but he caught her before she hit the ground. He held her close.
He buried his face in her hair.
She clipped him under the jaw so hard her fingers ached.
He reared back in pain, but didn’t drop her. “Gisele,” he growled.
She clawed for his face.
“Stop it.” He grabbed one wrist and then the other, crushing them together while he held her against his chest. She struggled, and he shook her. “You don’t want to fight me.”
Yeah, she damn well did. She needed to make him—actually, she couldn’t remember how their fight had started. Whatever it was, it was no longer important. All that mattered was smashing Shade’s face in.
“You’re right. I want to kill you,” she spit.
She struggled harder.
If she ever got her hands free, she was going to gouge out his eyes.
“I shouldn’t have brought you here.” He winced. “I should’ve taken you through Greed and then Fame even if it added two days. Gigi, we have to leave.” He leaned close, so tantalizingly close to her. His breath tickled hot over her lips as he said, “S
top trying to hurt me.”
And then he kissed her.
If he meant to distract her, it worked.
Her thoughts blurred and wavered like a desert mirage on a deadly mid-summer day. Thirst slammed into her, and never had she felt such need. It undid her, leaving her mewling, trembling, weak. Wanting more.
His tongue had whet her appetite and stoked a fire in her belly. And now she could think only of how she desired, needed, to drink this man down. And she could. She would take it all—every last drop of his heart and soul.
Now.
He hissed and jerked back. It wasn’t until she saw the blood beading his bottom lip that she realized she’d bit him.
“Gigi…”
His liquid-tar eyes drained to a cold, slate gray. At last, she’d wounded him, hurt him to the point of drawing out his humanity, but strangely, she didn’t feel good about it.
“Let go of me,” she commanded him, feeling the force of magic in her words—and he seemed helpless to resist her.
He stood back, watching her with a grim expression, as the ground rumbled beneath them. The sound of thunder broke the night, striking again and again, nearing. Boom-scrape. Boom-scrape. Rattling the inside of her skull.
But it wasn’t a raging storm that approached. It was footfall. It was blood-slicked, hard-clacking hooves. It was pavement cracking beneath the weight of a monster.
The minotaur had found them.
24
She’d never seen anything like it.
Demons dressed in formal black and gray waited impatiently in a line that wrapped around the block. Ties and furs, pearls and garnet cufflinks—it wasn’t what she would’ve expected from the clientele of a fetish club.
“The Fucking Goat,” she read off the bronze-lettered sign. “Seems a bit high end for the name.”
“It is, but only recently,” Shade agreed. He wasn’t looking at the building at all. He was looking at her, gray eyes intent.
His fingers coiled in her hair.
She shivered.
“Is this some kind of joke?” she asked.
As far as she could tell, the front of the two-story brick building was an exact replica of The Fainting Goat, the bar in Baltimore where she’d met with Marcel Haywood to unwittingly sign the contract with her aunt. This place was a mirror of where it had all started for her, The Fainting Goat’s evil twin.
Demon humor? Or did it mean something more?
Either way, it was no mistake Shade had brought them here.
“Do you hear me laughing?” Shade answered, tone grim.
Beast scuffed a red-stained hoof on the ground. Though he tried to keep his voice low, it still cracked when he said, “Is no joking matter.” After a pause, he added, “Little dragon has thought up good plan, yes? Would not use plan that might endanger Half-blood? And would never lead Half-blood into trap?”
Shade tore his gaze from her, irises blackening in fury. His eyes cut into the minotaur. “That goes without saying, and you know it.”
But the minotaur didn’t, or he wouldn’t have asked.
Beast still didn’t trust Shade.
Shade scowled, but she could tell it unsettled him. He didn’t want to be doubted by the people he’d aligned himself with. And she understood that.
They’d each hurt him now and in the span of only a few hours. Remorse gnawed at her rib cage.
“Beast,” she chastised, before turning to Shade. She traced a hand delicately along his jaw. “I’m sorry I bit you.”
And choked you, and thought to do so much worse.
It wasn’t the first time she’d apologized. She’d begged his forgiveness ten-fold since, and now it just seemed to make him uncomfortable.
He shifted his weight against her and pressed an arm to the brick wall by her head.
“I told you it was my fault.” His eyes were a solemn gray, wounded and bare.
The bite, and even the drawing of blood, wasn’t what bothered her. It was the fact that she’d lost herself so easily, that she could’ve thought to hurt him at all that sickened her. Even though she’d never drawn a weapon, hadn’t caused him serious damage despite the gripping compulsion, it still troubled her in a deep, soul-scorching way.
That he’d been unable to bring her back to her senses was what ate at him, she knew. It hurt him that it had taken Beast to calm her.
Beast had been the one to pacify her. He’d eclipsed her anger toward Shade the moment he’d arrived, her eyes riveted to his hulking form, his voice jarring through her as he’d asked her why she was fighting.
“For you,” she’d said, body sagging with relief.
Unlike her, and despite what Shade had feared, the minotaur had never lost himself to the allure of violence. Maybe because he was a creature born of it, she didn’t know, but the district’s thirst had held no grip on him. He’d merely fought to protect them—savagely so—and then had trotted after them to catch up.
When they’d reached the nightclub in the center of Vice, they’d ducked into a side alley to stow the bike and regroup. But why they still hesitated, watching the place instead of joining the line, she had no clue.
“Time to move draws near,” Beast told them.
“Right,” Shade answered. He assessed her with a flick of his gaze. “If we’re going to slip inside, we have to go for it soon. But first, we need you to look a little less conspicuous.”
“What do you mean?” She shivered against his touch. Swallowing had become painful, her throat was so dry—had been since they’d landed in Thirst, the First Hell Gate—but since they’d entered the Black District, no other desires had pulled at her the way they had in Violence and Solitude. Maybe she didn’t have any vices that could take hold of her.
The subtle spiciness of Shade’s storm cloud scent overtook her as he leaned close to press his lips to her ear. “You’re wearing a crown, princess,” he whispered, and the words slid like silk against her skin. “You’re hard not to notice.”
At the teasing nickname, she warmed all over, wanting to strip him naked and do things that could only be considered tawdry when performed in a grubby back alleyway with a third-party voyeur.
Okay, maybe she did have a vice after all.
“I don’t know how to change back to normal,” she said, tone gone throaty.
“Not normal.” Neck flushed, Shade pulled back. “Just…shielded. You haven’t even seen what you look like normal yet.”
“There’s more?” As if red and black eyes weren’t enough? She already looked like the stuff of nightmares and all she’d done was sprout elongated nails, teeth, and horns. What if next she grew a tail or…or wings?
But she liked Shade’s wings. They were dark and scary but also hauntingly beautiful. Surely, it wouldn’t be so bad if all this time, she’d been hiding something similar.
“Tell me.” She bit her lip. “What do I really look like? Is it frightening?”
Shade winced. This wasn’t where he’d wanted the conversation to go.
Beast watched them, silent.
“I don’t know.” Shade swallowed. “You’re not like a valahan, Gigi. The sovereign bloodlines don’t manifest their, uh, more unique forms or Rights of Blood until puberty. And even then, sometimes it’s later. I never saw it.”
Because the last time he’d seen her, she’d been eleven and dying.
“You didn’t look much different from human as a child,” he added, affirming her stab of emotion.
Yet she was well past puberty, and she’d only ever looked as she did now. Mostly.
“But my parents…?” She stared at the pads of her fingers, at her deceptively delicate-looking hands, as the words tumbled out.
“You really want to know? Because this isn’t really the time or place.”
Oh, yes, he could tell her. But he wasn’t keen to.
“Fine. Just tell me how to change back.” Since we’re in such a hurry. He’d tell her later, when they were alone. She’d make him.
He exp
lained the process to her like he had when they’d summoned hellfire in the woods the previous night—had it been such a short time ago?—and just like then, she sucked in way too much energy for the task, far more than she’d ever been able to pull before. It left her body humming. But this time she was able to release it, feeling it dribble between her fingers until she held only what was needed.
Changing back was painful, and ripped a scream from her already-raw throat. Shade muffled it with a hand, and afterwards, she felt better, more like her usual self.
“You’ll get used to it,” he said, smoothing his knuckles down her bare arms. “It gets easier, hurts less.”
“What about our clothing?” she asked as he fluffed her hair around her horns, hiding the little nubs that protruded above the line of her bangs.
Unlike the refined clientele in line outside the club, she was geared up in dirty-wash jeans, sweaty and road-worn. Beast was covered hoof to horn in bloody gore, and Shade’s white cotton shirt was ripped across his shoulder blades.
“Not much we can do about it,” he answered.
Beast agreed. “Will go now,” the minotaur said, sounding agitated and fidgety.
She nodded. “All right. Lead the way.”
Shade took her hand, and the three of them headed for the line. But with a start, she realized they were heading for the front of it, not the back. “Once we’re in, don’t leave my side,” he told her.
She gripped his hand tighter. Was he serious? They were really going to skip all these demons?
Sure, they could hold their own, but three against a couple hundred weren’t great odds any way she looked at it.
He’d been so dead set on avoiding a fight in Violence, but maybe he trusted her more now. Here she’d have his back rather than trying to stick a knife in it.
Shade appeared much more confident than she felt, bored and dangerous, paying no heed to the line as they waltzed past it.
She, on the other hand, couldn’t keep her wide eyes off it.