by Fox, Logan
Simon didn’t love her. And he might lust… but not after her body.
He lusted after her soul. He wanted to grind it between his teeth until it became a paste. Then he’d consume her, and that would be the end of her.
Which was what she deserved, but Baby Girl didn’t. She was innocent in this life. She hadn’t even taken her first fucking breath.
Did karma not give a fuck about that?
Were there no second chances?
No possible way for someone to redeem themselves from their past transgressions?
Cora squeezed her eyes closed as the cloth slid between her lips.
Better than staring into Simon’s eyes.
So much better.
He’d found a goddamn video camera. He’d set it on the back of the couch, facing the bed. And now…
Simon turned it on.
A devil’s eyes glanced up at her.
“Ready for your closeup?” he asked, and for some fucked up reason, his voice still made her body ache for his touch… even knowing it would be the last thing she ever felt.
36
The Blood of Kane
Finn pushed open Swan Manor’s front door, his eyes taking in the foyer in a quick scan.
Empty.
For a moment, he considered where to start his search, but a sound drew his eyes to the staircase.
A tight, muffled moan.
The hair on his arms lifted all at once. He heard Lars whispering furiously at him, but he couldn’t have given a fuck if Lars had transformed into one of the four riders of the apocalypse.
Cora.
He snarled, picking up speed as he headed for Cora’s old bedroom.
More sounds now. Animal grunting. Bed springs. The carnal orchestra of pleasure, already reaching a crescendo.
His beast growled low and deep, tensing as if ready to pounce.
Fuck it, he was ready to pounce. His hand stuck out, slamming into the partly closed bedroom door.
The air solidified around him.
He was dimly — very dimly — aware that something wasn’t right. That he wasn’t seeing everything there was to see.
But what he saw unraveled him. The edges of his vision flickered red, and his beast’s growl became his own.
Cora, on her back, gagged and lashed to the bed. Legs spread.
Blood. So much fucking blood.
Kane on top of her. Bloodied hands around her throat. Fucking her as he strangled her.
Finn couldn’t remember crossing the floor.
His growl became a roar as his hand curled into a creaking fist.
It collided with the side of Kane’s head, sending the man sprawling onto the floor.
Cora, marks on her throat.
But she hadn’t been fighting him.
Voices. Lars. Bailey, possibly. A river of blood hissed through his ears, drowning them out. His beast pounced, reaching through him, through his body, for Kane.
The man was still rolling onto his back, eyes wide with shock, when Finn’s fist crashed into his jaw again. He whimpered in pain, scrambling up and back.
But Beast was faster. Stronger. Ruthless and brutal and hankering for blood.
Kane’s blood.
He reached him as he got to the bed. Kane scrambled up, perhaps trying to get away, but Beast caught him around his ankle and dragged him back.
Finn’s body went numb. He flowed back — unwanted and unneeded — and watched events unfold like a dream.
Or a nightmare.
His hands tangled in Kane’s hair, using that grip to drive the man’s head into the corner of Cora’s nightstand. Kane went limp for a moment, life driven from him, but then it returned and stiffened his body like a lightning strike reanimating a corpse.
Kane swung around. His fist connected with Finn’s jaw.
He both felt and heard the crack of bone against bone, but, to his beast, it was nothing more than a tickle.
Rip him open. Make him shout. Chew his bones and shit them out.
Finn laughed, but the sound emerged distorted and alien.
Fear flooded Kane’s face. He looked flabbergasted — as if he couldn’t understand why a punch to the jaw had just glanced off Finn without doing any damage.
Beast could.
Finn grabbed Kane’s throat in both hands and forced him into the wall beside Cora’s bed. He lifted Kane two feet off the floor, trying to push the man’s spine through the plaster. Kane struggled like a fish on a hook, eyes bulging as he left deep trenches in Finn’s wrists and hands.
Kane would cause no further damage — he’d already been scarred. His beast laughed like a hyena at the human’s futile struggles. Kane’s face went dark as trapped blood swelled his capillaries. The sounds he made turned from protest to pleas.
He’d had his nose broken, but not from Finn’s doing. Had that been Cora?
Tar thick realization oozed into him like a cancer. Finn blinked hard, trying to force back Beast so he could think of something other than blood.
There was a sob behind him.
“Finn! Don’t!”
And that was all it took for Beast to subside. With a silent whimper, Finn spun around. Kane slid from his hands the moment his eyes latched onto Cora.
Lars and Bailey had their arms around her, bundling her into a protective circle. Lars must have felt Finn’s eyes on him, because the man locked gazes a second later.
A physical shock tore through Finn. Lars’s face didn’t change — that hatred grew hard; soap stone to marble. Seconds passed, counted only by Finn’s thundering heart and the wretched, torn sounds Cora made.
“Why the fuck haven’t you killed him yet?” Lars roared.
Cora emerged from their bundle of arms with a choking, wailed, “No!”
The bubble popped. Reality washed over Finn like boiling water. He grimaced, trying to force the visceral images from his head, but they kept coming.
Kane on top of Cora.
Cora — not fighting… because she enjoyed it.
Finn spun back to Kane.
The man had been waiting for him. Something heavy crashed into the side of Finn’s head. Darkness beckoned, beckoned, and almost claimed him.
Even though he clung to his consciousness like a drowning man to a splinter of wood, his grip became too weak to keep him afloat.
And so he sank.
* * *
Swan Manor’s front door burst open. No one except Bailey seemed to care. He swung around, his arms still tight around Cora, and strained to hear something over the sound of Lars yelling at Finn.
“Guys,” he said, panic tightening his voice. “Guys!”
Finn took a blow to the head and staggered, reeling. Porcelain shattered, a piece pinging from his arm. Another landing in Cora’s mussed hair.
Boots on marble. Then nothing.
They were coming up the stairs.
“Guys!”
But it was too late.
* * *
Lars didn’t like the way Milo fell to the floor — not one fucking bit. He didn’t like the way he just lay there, either. It made no sense. A lump of plaster wouldn’t have had that effect on him.
His eyes flickered past Milo to his assailant, and stuck there.
Bailey said something, but the sound of his blood singing violent songs to him deafened him. Bailey would just have to take care of Bailey.
This guy? This fucker? That was all he cared about right now.
All he had was a knife. But he could do some pretty sick stuff with it. Stuff he’d only ever done in self-defense in a desert where there were no witnesses. Just him, the sun, the sand, and a dead person.
But now he wanted to make sure everyone saw. He wanted Kane’s death to be public and brutal and psycho-sick.
Lars lunged for Kane. The man side-stepped easily enough. Something approaching mirth touched his grimace of a smile, and honest to God it stank that it made him that much more handsome.
Didn’t they say Lucifer — the ang
el of light — was the most beautiful of all the angels?
Kane definitely had Satan’s good looks. A face carved from demonic stone where evil wormed in his pitch-black pupils. The darkness of every shadow in every child’s closet. The corner of night where spiders built their secret webs. The musty black of a basement where unseen things skulked.
Maybe he’d carve the fuck’s face off. Then he wouldn’t be so pretty anymore.
He lunged again, and this time Kane misjudged the distance between them because Lars’s blade snagged on his shirt.
They squared off again, but before either of them continued their knife play, Kane’s eyes darted to the bedroom door.
Did Kane honestly think him that stupid?
But if it was a feint, this man should have been given an Oscar. Surprise widened Kane’s eyes, and his mouth opened as if he was going to say something.
An instant later, his expression changed into a sneer. Night. Day. “The fuck you doing here?”
Lars swung around. An elegantly dressed man stood in the doorway. Couldn’t have been older than forty, but his silver hair looked as if it had been that way for a while. He wore a smile both genuine and surprised as he took in the scene.
Kane coughed, sliding to the floor as if his legs had given way. Finn was coming to, but achingly slowly. Lars took a step back, lifting a hand when he noticed that the two men standing just behind the silver-haired guy were both armed.
“Bad time?” the man said, his Irish accent thick.
Lars did a double take.
Holy fuck, was this Ronan King?
Hand tailored, designer threads. Skin so healthy only a rich fuck could have afforded it.
But his eyes.
So pale as to be silver, and so penetratingly frank Lars felt the need to confess every dirty thought, petty crime, and murder he’d ever committed.
Ronan cast an eye around Cora’s bedroom. “Didn’t know snuff still paid so well.”
Snuff?
Lars glanced at the bed, where Cora lay bound, spread-eagled, and exposed. Blood on her throat and belly, hair a mess of tangles. And then he noticed the video camera positioned on the back of the couch, facing the bed.
Jesus fucking Christ. It didn’t look good, did it?
Lars caught movement from the corner of his eyes. Luckily, he had a scrap of wits about him and didn’t turn to look.
Finn was taking stock of the situation. Ronan’s cronies were so dumbstruck by what they considered the makings of a snuff film, that they didn’t even notice. Especially the guy wearing a suit as expensive as Ronan’s, if not as neatly tailored.
“I don’t have all night,” Ronan said, that smile of his never moving an inch. “I’m afraid I’ll have ta cut the theatrics short.”
He lifted the hand at his side, making the tiniest of gestures toward the bed.
“Kill her.”
37
Mania
Owen’s breath caught in his throat as he took in the sight of Cora. He hardly recognized her.
The blood.
It kept drawing his eyes. There was a line on her belly as if she’d been struck with a whip.
A shiver coursed through him at the thought. How that must have felt. What it must have sounded like.
He’d never been tied up. He’d always come to his punishments as a willing sacrifice. But she wasn’t struggling. Because she was in shock? Because she’d resigned herself to the fact that death was minutes away?
That’s what happened when life dealt you a shitty hand. You either played the cards you had or folded. It didn’t help that the dealer was Death, and he saw through any poker face you showed him.
“Kill her!”
Owen blinked and focused on Ronan’s face.
He hadn’t thought Ronan would end her tonight. He’d assumed he would keep her alive to inflict pain.
That was his specialty.
And there was the heroin deal. If Cora wasn’t alive to go to the meet, how would they secure enough heroin for Gaffer?
“But we need her.” The words fell out his mouth before he thought through their impact. “The heroin… if she’s not at the drop—”
Twisting, Ronan regarded him for a moment. And there it was again — that spark Owen had latched on to the first time they’d met. Hidden deep beneath perversions and needs no ordinary man should harbor… but it still there. He was still in control.
For now.
Ronan swung back to the bed. Cora and Bailey both tensed when his eyes fell on them. Owen couldn’t blame them — he’d felt the full fury of those eyes on him many times.
Not that it had ever been his doing, of course.
“I don’t need anyone,” Ronan croaked.
King had always been careful. Whenever he left Rhodium Drive, he wore a bullet-proof vest. He always had either Owen or Will at his side, both packing multiple weapons.
But he’d never known Ronan to pack.
When Ronan pulled out a gleaming Smith & Wesson magnum and aimed it at Cora’s trussed up body, he took too long to realize what the man planned to do.
He would ruin everything.
Gaffer would fire him. Or kill him. Or both. Even Darcy would—
Owen stood to Ronan’s right, Will to his left. Ronan curled his finger around the trigger, and Owen barreled into him from the right, his arm swung to the left.
When some knee-jerk reaction had Ronan squeezing the trigger even though he’d lost sight of his target, that bullet went wild.
And it took out Will instead.
The man went down without a sound, which made the snap of the 357 echo.
Silence reigned for long moments, stealing everyone’s breath.
Ronan faced him with a snarl that turned his marrow to ice. He’d only seen that expression once before — the night Ronan had returned from meeting with Gaffer, where the old man had told him he’d have to get Darcy to birth a child or he could kiss his career goodbye.
That night, Owen had felt the full fury of Ronan’s torment.
He almost hadn’t survived.
The thought lodged deep in his brain, rendering him paralyzed as Ronan took a decisive step toward him and raised the Smith & Wesson again.
A roar sounded out behind Owen.
If he’d been able to move, he would have turned. But judging from the shock on Ronan’s face, maybe it was a mercy he didn’t see the beast descend on Ronan.
On his boss.
His mentor.
His Master.
* * *
Beast growled and spat. Muscles tensed into steel ropes. There was agony, but it was buried somewhere deep. Somewhere dark. Somewhere Beast couldn’t be affected by it.
But that had nothing to do with the visceral wounds torn through its mind.
It was a primitive creature. Primordial at best. It knew only survival and comfort.
It rarely received comfort without fighting for it. And this it knew to be survival.
Every nerve in the beast’s body splintered with urgency. With agony. But it surfaced despite that. Pain was a state of mind, and Beast was mindless.
Nothing mattered. Not his pain. Not his comfort.
Only survival.
And Beast knew the female was its survival. His survival.
Theirs.
Without her, they were nothing.
Without her, they would perish.
Her presence made pain bearable. Her smile chased away the shadows, filling every dark crevice with a blinding light.
And this man — the one using a smile to hide his suffering — it wanted to end her.
Beast wouldn’t let him.
They wouldn’t let him.
Cora would live… even if they had to die.
Beast slammed into the man, and they both went down. The man had a weapon, but it was useless against Beast. He would have gnashed it in his teeth if the man hadn’t fired it in shock before dropping it.
Blood tainted the air. It was what had roused him th
e first time. What had brought him back the second time. As always, it was his undoing. His release. His freedom. But he wanted more.
Beast always wanted more.
If he could dredge the very agony that had borne him into existence, he would.
In fact, he tried.
He dug deep… so fucking deep. Screams like a tortured violin filled the air, quickly evolving into an orchestral score that resonated with every lurching, pounding thump of his beastly heart.
Claws now wet with blood.
Snout tasting of copper.
Flesh caught between his canines.
Something bit into his arm. He swung around, seeing red until he’d blinked the blood from his eyes.
More shadows. Struggling. Urgent. Familiar.
And one, facing him, weapon in hand.
Ready to pull the trigger again.
But shaking.
Shaking ever so slightly.
This was a creature that understood pain, perhaps even welcomed it. But standing before the Master of Suffering, it realized some pain could be experienced but could never survived.
Beast turned back to his prey.
And together they tore the miserable fuck to pieces.
* * *
Bailey’s stomach twisted a second before he retched onto the carpet by the foot of Cora’s bed.
He didn’t know what surprised him more — the fact that he was the only one so far who’d puked, or that everyone in the room kept watching Finn tear Ronan apart like they wished they had popcorn to go with their torture-porn movie of the night.
“Bailey,” came Cora’s hoarse whisper.
He slid from the bed, found his feet when he had his back against the wall. Fumbling absently at a bond holding Cora in place with one hand, he swiped over his mouth with the other.
Finn sat back, breath rasping. He spat out blood and flesh and then fell away from Ronan as if he’d just woken from a nightmare to find he’d never been asleep.
“Don’t m-move,” came Owen’s quavering voice.
He was the only one in the room with a weapon in hand. Will had dropped his when Ronan had accidentally shot him in the chest and lay in a pile on the floor, clutching his chest as if he could somehow keep his blood from spilling out through his bullet wound.