The little cage of an elevator was to his left but he wasn’t that anxious to find them. Putting himself inside that wretched box would only happen if he was dead. He found the stairs and started to climb up and up, bypassing each floor without pause.
They were at the top.
Lain could feel them.
Feel their presence.
A smug smile curled his lips. Rhys thought he was being so careful, so cautious.
* * * * *
She stood there, looking so stricken that Rhys would have been humiliated and angry if he hadn’t seen the look in her eyes in the heartbeats right after he’d proposed. That incredible joy and for a minute, she’d almost started to smile.
Then reality had intruded. His logical, thoughtful Holly couldn’t help but let reality intrude, he suspected. It was her nature. Cupping a hand around her neck, he bent his head low and murmured in her ear, “You’re thinking, precious. I told you, don’t think this through. Just say what is in your heart. If there was nothing else in the picture, nothing but you and me, what would you wish for, Holly? Tell me what you want, not what you think is best.” Lifting his head, he gave her a taunting grin and added, “You and I both hate to have somebody else tell us what is best for us.”
Her lips curled in a faint smile but she shook her head. “It isn’t as easy as all that.”
Rhys shook his head. When she would have argued, he cradled her face in his hand and pressed his thumb to her lower lip. “Yes, Holly, it is. I asked you a question that only you can answer. You’re of an age to wed, should you choose and nobody can interfere with that.” Crooking a brow, he added, “Not even good ol’ St. Nik.”
Sweeping his thumb across her lip, he stared down into her beautiful, worried eyes. “Tell me what you want, Holly.”
Her lashes lowered over her eyes. A sliver of fear worked its way inside his heart. She was going to say she didn’t want to marry him. Clenching his jaw, Rhys braced himself. If he had to hear her honestly say she didn’t want to marry him, it was going to ruin something inside him. But he wouldn’t give up. Holly loved him. She’d said so. And more—he could see it in her eyes, in the way she smiled at him, the way she cuddled up against him after they made love.
But then she looked at him. For once, the fear, the doubt, the anger she carried inside her heart didn’t show in her eyes. As he watched, a smile bloomed on her face, slow and hesitant at first and then a laugh bubbled out of her. She launched herself at him with a speed that made him stagger back a step. As his arms came around her, she whispered into his ear. “Yes…I want to say yes.”
Rhys fisted a hand in her hair and tugged her head so he could look into her eyes.
“Then say yes, Holly,” he demanded. “Say yes.”
She leaned in and pressed her lips to his chin. “Yes.”
* * * * *
He’d need a distraction, Lain knew and as he studied the young woman fumbling to open her door, he decided that she would work just fine. She was staggering and disoriented from drink and even from fifteen feet away, Lain could smell the alcohol, cigarette smoke and sex on her.
Forcing himself to smile, he said in a gentle voice, “Might I help?”
She jerked her head up, blinked blearily. Her words were slurred as she said, “Damn door won’t open.”
“Perhaps you shouldn’t try to use your credit card,” he said helpfully, plucking the card from her hand. Careful not to touch her, he took her purse and riffled through it, past lipsticks, loose change and foil-wrapped condoms until he found the key card down in the bottom. Pulling it out, he swiped it. The door clicked and he opened it, stepping aside to allow the woman to enter.
She gave him a wide, goofy grin, slipping past him into the room.
“Man, I must be drunker than I thought,” she said, giggling. But when he took a step forward, crowding her, some splinter of alarm worked past the fog in her brain. He could see it, could practically smell the fear on her.
It smelled good.
She fell back a step and then another and he followed each step, reaching behind him to close the door. When she opened her mouth, possibly to scream, Lain jerked her against him and covered her mouth with his hand. “No screaming yet, my dear.”
Arching back and wiggling, she struggled in his arms, trying to get away. Lain realized those desperate little attempts to escape felt almost as good as the fear emanating from her.
“No,” he murmured, sliding a hand down her back and forcing her body against his. “No screaming yet at all. Can’t have you alerting them yet, now can we? Why don’t you and I have a bit of fun while we wait?”
Then, without uncovering her mouth, he turned her body around, shoved her up against the wall and grabbed the hem of her skirt, jerking up. Part of his mind was appalled. She was mortal, she stank of her encounters from the past night and judging by the variety of scents on her, she’d been with at least two different men. She was so far beneath him, that she could arouse him at all was absurd.
Her teeth found the meaty part of his hand and she bit down hard. Hard enough that he scented his own blood in the air. But oddly, that sharp little pain only added to the intensity of his arousal. Tearing her panties off, he shoved his cock inside her.
She arched back, her body going rigid, fighting him. Although she fought, mortals were so pathetically weak, it made no difference. Crushing her into the wall, keeping his hand over her mouth, he used her, taking her with all the strength he had in his body.
At some point, she lost consciousness but he didn’t care. He simply pulled his hand away from her mouth and continued, lips peeling back from his teeth, his face contorting with spasms of pleasure.
She was bleeding when he was done and he let her limp body fall to the floor, stepping away and looking down at himself. Her blood was on his dick. Now that the frenzy had passed, he realized he was disgusted.
He nudged her with the toe of his boot. A soft moan escaped from her lips.
“Hmm.” Glancing around the room, he saw an open suitcase on the bed—bras, panties and pantyhose spilling out. He fished out two pairs of hose and a pair of panties. Shoving the panties inside her slack mouth to keep her quiet should she wake, he bound her with the pantyhose and then tossed her onto the bed.
That done, he headed into the bathroom. He simply had to get her blood and her sweat off.
* * * * *
Blissfully ignorant of the violence happening just a few feet away, Rhys cupped one hand over the curve of Holly’s neck and pulled her in close. Under his thumb, he could feel the rapid beat of her pulse fluttering away in her neck and as he lowered his lips to hers, it skipped a few beats and then sped up.
“I’ll see you happy, Holly,” he whispered against her mouth.
He kissed her softly and then lifted his head, staring down into her dark blue eyes. The worry in them knotted a fist around his heart. She wanted to believe in him, he could see it, but he could also see the hesitation and the doubt.
Rhys didn’t let it worry him. He knew what he was doing. There was just one thing he needed to do and then he could get her back to the Reach, back to safety.
In just a few minutes, he’d make damn sure that Nik couldn’t do something in stupidity that couldn’t be undone. And once she didn’t have to worry about her father’s good intentions and faulty reasoning, then Rhys could deal with Bordelain.
Giving her a smile, he squeezed her neck gently. “Have a little faith, Holly.”
Anything else she might have said was lost when the air around them turned red with blood. At least, it seemed so. They could smell it, feel the slippery wet warmth and see it splatter all around them.
It was the only warning they had.
There was one short, harsh scream, a scream that ended so abruptly, it left little speculation as to just why it had ended so abruptly. Muffled by walls and distance, their sharp hearing heard it nonetheless and Holly jerked, her body going rigid. Rhys hissed out a breath, his green eyes dark
ening to black, a faint, eerie red glow reflecting from their depths—a glimpse of hellfire, Holly thought.
And then he moved away, his lashes sweeping down to shield his gaze.
“Stay here,” he ordered.
She stiffened, her eyes narrowing at his abrupt, harsh tone. He paused long enough to give her an impatient glance. “I need to see what happened. I move quicker if I’m not worrying about you.”
“I’ve been taking care of myself for the past couple weeks just fine, Rhys.”
“And how many dead bodies have you seen in the past couple weeks, precious? Make no mistake, somebody just died. Do you really need that image inside your head? You see death once, Holly, and that’s all it takes. It scars you. I don’t want that on you.” His mouth twisted and for a minute, his face looked bleak. “I wouldn’t want that on anybody but especially not you.”
Nausea slid through her gut. “Ahhh. Okay. Waiting here sounds good.” She didn’t see it as cowardly, or even particularly squeamish. Just pragmatic. Holly had a feeling she wouldn’t tolerate blood so well and even if pity moved inside her heart and whispered she should do something, her head spoke a bit louder.
Somebody was dead. She could feel the darkness of that death hanging in the air like fog. She couldn’t do a damn thing to help a dead mortal and if it would be easier on Rhys for him not to worry about her, then that was reason enough to stay behind.
Holly wasn’t a fighter like her father. She knew that and she was perfectly fine with that. Staying out of harm’s way when she couldn’t particularly do anything to help seemed best. Slowly, she nodded. “Fine. I’ll wait here.”
His eyes softened. “Thank you.” And then he was gone, sliding away from her—a fast, silent shadow.
Holly was watching him and he seemed to blur before her eyes. As the door closed behind him, she shivered.
Icy cold wrapped around her.
Fear began to eat at her heart.
A mortal might be dead somewhere down the hall but Holly’s instincts were screaming. Behind her, she heard a soft, slow chuckle and she spun, striking out before her mind even acknowledged the threat.
Her foot struck a hard, muscled belly and she saw eyes go wide with surprise. Backpedaling away, she found herself staring at a familiar face. She knew this man. Although she sensed absolutely nothing coming off him, in his eyes was a look of sheer malice.
“Hello, sweet.” Her gut pitched and twisted as he smiled at her.
“Bordelain,” she said quietly, edging back another step.
He paused, his head cocking to the side. “You know who I am,” he mused, his voice quiet and thoughtful.
Yeah, she knew him. He’d been one of her father’s men. But Holly had a feeling he didn’t recognize her.
Good. That’s good. His ignorance of her identity was definitely a plus.
Every instinct inside her screamed she keep away from him. Just looking at him filled her with a foreboding so intense that it took everything she had in her not to cringe when he stepped toward her.
It was him—he’d been the one watching her.
Holly had no precognitive abilities, save for the preternatural instincts all elves possessed. She had no gift for empathy like Bryan and her telekinetic skills were limited. But she didn’t need to read this man in any way, shape or form to realize that he presented a danger. Some primitive survival instinct had already summed him up and she could all but smell the deadly intent that burned inside him.
It made little sense. Bordelain was—or at least he had—been one of her father’s most trusted men and her father wasn’t easily fooled. Only a terribly canny man could have duped Nik, Rhys and the whole damn Northern Council for so long.
“Hmmm.” Lain studied her speculatively, his eyes narrowing on her face. “Why do you look so familiar to me?”
She stood there, hoping, praying that he wouldn’t figure it out.
He did, though. A diabolical smile curled his lips and she knew exactly when he figured it out.
“Now I know.” He started to laugh and the sound of it sent shivers down her spine. “The Claus’ precious, precocious little girl, alone out in the big, bad mortal world. How…convenient.”
“Not from where I’m standing,” she said, hating how her voice shook.
“No. I imagine not.” He smiled at her, but there was little humor in it. “You look a bit scared, Holly.”
Blood rushed to her face. Oh, she’d passed a bit scared a couple hundred heartbeats ago. But that he could see her fear was humiliating. Intolerable. Slowly, she forced her muscles to relax and she blanked her features. “What do you want?”
Bordelain laughed. “Oh, child, why do you ask questions when you already know the answers? You know what I want. I can see it in your eyes. You know, I’d always heard you were a bit of fluff, Holly. Spoiled, overindulged, rather incapable, all in all. If you truly are all of that, then you wouldn’t have pegged me so quickly. If by some slim chance you did, I would have expected you to start screaming.”
Holly curled her lip at him. “Yeah, well, people have made all sorts of dumbass assumptions about me. For the most part, they’ve all been wrong.”
He frowned distastefully. “So vulgar. Have you always been so crass or did it come from spending time in the mortal world?”
“Who the fuck knows?” She bared her teeth in a mean smile.
Bordelain made a tsking sound under his breath. “I can see I’m going to have to silence you. Perhaps I’ll rip out your tongue.” He smiled at her, a disturbingly sane smile considering that it didn’t exactly sound like an empty threat.
“Only way you’ll keep me quiet,” she promised. Self-preservation was screaming at her to shut up but something else was egging on her. Pride, an instinct to fight back, she didn’t know. But she sure as hell wasn’t going to act however he seemed to think she should.
“Tell me, Holly, what are you doing here with Rhys? It would seem to me that he would have other things on his plate, searching for me and all.”
Holly pretended to study her nails. She’d had a manicure done the other day and her nails glowed a bright, almost sapphire blue. Buffing them on her shirt, she said, “I wanted to go shopping. I can’t do a damn thing without an escort and Da’s got this idea in his head that only his best will do for me.” Giving him a winsome smile, she added, “Rhys is the best.”
He dragged in a slow breath of air, his head tipped back. His nostrils flared and she knew what he smelled on the air. “Hmmm. I don’t see it, Holly. You’ve been in here fucking him. Santa Claus’ precious little angel fornicating with the Claus’ second-incommand and your father thinks you’re on a shopping trip?”
Holly winked at him. “A good excuse, huh? Get some shopping done and I can get laid. And trust me, Rhys is the best.”
“You’re lying to me.” The words were delivered in a cold, impersonal manner but his eyes snapped with fury. “I don’t like liars, Holly. Or vulgar little half-human whores.”
“Insane, fanatical zealots are more your thing, huh?”
He came at her silently and Holly ducked away, tried to avoid him. But she hadn’t been warrior trained and the basic self-defense that she did know wasn’t going to compare to somebody who had trained as a fighter. She ended up pinned on the floor, trapped under his crushing weight as he smiled down at her.
“Aren’t you going to call for help? Scream for your daddy, little girl? I’d like to see his face as I kill you in front of him.”
Oh, Holly was going to scream, all right. But she didn’t scream for her father.
* * * * *
Rhys heard the pounding at the door and he knew he didn’t have much time before security forced their way inside. He’d used his magic to disable the key code after he’d entered the room but they’d bust the door down. He had only a few minutes left and it wasn’t enough.
The girl lay on the floor, cut open from neck to navel. Her eyes stared sightlessly up at the ceiling. They were a soft
, pretty green or at least they had been in life, Rhys imagined. Now they had that blank, empty stare of the dead. The scent of sex and violence was thick in the room, the putrid scents of intestines and blood fouling the air. She had ugly bruises on her wrists and thighs and there was little doubt that she’d been sexually abused before her life was so abruptly ended.
Young—too young. Mortal life was damn short anyway but this girl had been cut down just a few years into womanhood.
Under the cloying miasma of blood, sex and gore he didn’t want to put a name to, there was something else in the air. Something that made his skin go cold but everything else crowded in on his senses and his brain couldn’t process it.
Magic. The faint trace lingered, unmistakable. Not actively used but somebody with magical blood had been in here. His gut knotted. Closing his eyes, he blocked out the sounds of people banging at the door, the thrum of raised voices outside in the hall and everything within the room, focusing on the faint, elusive scent.
The door came open with a crash just as Rhys finally pegged it.
At the very same time, he heard a scream in his mind—Holly.
The door crashed open and Rhys snarled.
Mortal law enforcement stood at the door, staring at him with flat, unreadable eyes, guns drawn. Using magic in front of mortals was forbidden.
Rhys didn’t even hesitate. He teleported out of the room just as one of the armed men shouted, “Step away from the girl.”
* * * * *
The ripple of magic whispered through the air didn’t go unnoticed by Bordelain or Holly.
Bordelain laughed under his breath. “Too late, you wretched fool.”
At first, Holly thought he was talking to her but then she realized he was talking to Rhys. Rhys wasn’t there yet but they’d both felt his magic and she knew he was coming.
He’d come for her. She knew he would. She threw back her head to scream but Bordelain clamped a hand over her mouth and nose, effectively silencing her and slowly suffocating her. Her half-elvish blood kept her alert longer than she could have managed had she been wholly human but as seconds ticked by and her heartbeat slowed, she knew she had to get air soon or she would pass out.
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