Marked (Dark Ties Book 1)

by A. Vers

  My heart slams. “I thought nothing could do—”

  The twist of his lips is more a grimace than a smile. “We are damn near invincible, Lilah. But even we can be killed. Hurt.” His eyes track over my face. “I buried too many of my kind this last month. Brightex is a poison. One designed to target the supernatural cells in our bodies.” His head shakes. “I need to know where Vic’s main office is.”

  I blink. “At Carnage.”

  He just glares at me.

  My hands fly in annoyance. “I swear. It’s the only one I know of.”

  His big body moves away, pacing across the dove-grey flooring in long strides. He’s barely contained violence. Grace and sexuality—

  I stop the thought before it goes farther.

  “That office was clean. Wiped of all information. Even the desktop was blank.”

  Whoa.

  My brows furrow. “I don’t understand ...” I start to pace too. As we pass each other in the middle of the floor, his arm brushes mine in a velvet caress that shoots to my toes. My breathing hitches. I clamp my arms around my waist to keep from doing it again. “Unless he knew about you guys—or the raid ...”

  “He had no reason to wipe the system,” the captain finishes, looking at me.

  I can only nod.

  His shoulders roll, and every muscle on his torso ripples with the motion. ““Look, you’re safe here ... Considering.” He amends as my brows arch. “Just stick to the main part of the house and don’t go outside without one of the others. Anything you need, dial star seven on the phone.” I glance over at the old style handheld when he points. He moves to leave.

  I lunge. His skin is cooler than mine, but like warm, muscled silk under my palm. He peers down at me, dark eyes flowing to gold. My lips part at the strange play of color, like the sun is peeking through the veil of midnight. I pull back.

  “How long am I stuck here?” I ask.

  “Until this is over,” he says, jaw hardening. He walks to the door, and this time I don’t stop him.

  11

  Ruin

  I LEAN AGAINST THE wall outside Lilah’s room, gums fucking aching and my eyes shining with darkling light. It takes everything in me to keep my irises from blazing like beacons of bloodlust and desire. My leathers are too tight, constricting my swollen length. I shift, trying to relieve the pressure. Her scent has filled the fucking room in a damn cloud. One I want to strip naked in and let it soak into my fucking skin.

  “Goddess, what is wrong with me?” I groan as my heartbeat fills my member. It pulses, just like it would if I was buried inside her.

  Her jeans and that slim tank don’t help. They cling to her curves, offering glimpses of her plump rear and the soft curve of her stomach. One I want to sink my teeth into and trail little bites down to her slick center and ...

  My length beads inside my pants.

  Her full breasts and ass seem to haunt me as all the blood in my veins rushes to my groin. “Fuck me,” I moan, the words a hard pant.

  It’s been months since the last soft female warmed my bed. It’s not her , it’s a dry spell. Simple.

  You can do this, Wade. Get it to-fucking-gether.

  I walk down the hall and head to the manor’s front desk. The dome’s protective shield blocks out the morning and heavy-duty blinds are in place, keeping the house in a perpetual state of twilight. Maximus bustles around, straightening chairs within an inch of their life.

  He looks up as I near. “Master Wade? You should have retired by now.”

  As though his words are the key to my ultimate vertical repast, my body tingles. A firm reminder that daylight is right outside. “Headed there now.” He bows, white fluffy hair swaying with the motion. “The girl, Lilah ... anything she needs ... make sure she gets it, yeah?”

  Another bow. “Of course, my lord.”

  I offer him a tight smile and head back upstairs.

  The manor is chill, quiet, with the hour. Most of us keep a nocturnal schedule thanks to the shit we deal with. Why the world’s lowlifes want to do business under the cover of darkness ...

  Hell, it’s fine with me regardless. Saves me from one hell of a sunburn.

  Not that my kind normally has a problem with sunshine. But you can only take so many lives, innocent or otherwise, until it starts to fuck with you on some level. Seventy-five years ago, when I signed up to join this circus, no one mentioned the aftereffects. The weight that you carry every fucking day.

  There is too much blood on my hands. Too many rogue supes killed, too many donors drained in an effort to survive my transition. All during a time when it was like the dark ages for our kind. After the war ...

  I shut it down. Those are years I don’t want to revisit. Years of war, death, and memories of her.

  Scrubbing my face, I haul myself down the hall and push through the heavy doors into the coven house. I snag a bottle of whiskey from the bar and slip to the back of the stairwell. The tunnel is wide open and the almost musky fragrance of the basement level wafts up to me. My prison until sundown.

  Just because my fucking mind hates me, it throws up Lilah pacing next to me in the suite, her little bare feet silent on the carpet and those chestnut waves flowing around her face.

  Twenty-one.

  She’s a fucking kid compared to me. Innocent and too damn good. It makes my gums ache, her sweetness. But her temper makes something else ache too.

  Her humanity shines from her like an angel’s grace. It’s a frailty... a weakness. The poor kid has no idea what is really out there. How many true monsters lurk in places she can’t see, with faces that look as normal as hers or mine.

  And I have to get a lead from her somehow. I have to bring her deeper into this hell in order to stop one of the worst monsters of our time.

  I take a swig from the bottle and head down into the bowels of the earth. Yeah. This is going to be a shit show of epic proportions just like it was before. I just fucking know it.

  SOMETHING HEAVY SLAMS and my eyes spring wide. The dream shatters, leaving Lilah’s soft scent in my nose and my body primed and ready to go.

  “Hey, Cap. You take a siesta with your five-fingered girlfriend and her friend whiskey again?” Tanner’s voice echoes like steel picks in my skull.

  I hold up a hand, middle finger straight and proud over the back of the downstairs couch. But he’s right. The last vestige of sleep fades away on an exhale of whiskey and air. I sit up, head pounding. The empty bottle crashes to the floor beside me, and I stare at it through a haze.

  After chugging half the fucking bottle on the way down the stairs, the couch seemed like a good place to prop my boots up. Don’t remember staying though.

  Gage crouches in front of me, tall glass of almost pink hued water in hand. “Fuck. You look like shit,” he says. “Do you feel like it too?”

  I take the glass and guzzle half. Nothing like O+ to start the day. “I’m fucking beautiful, man.”

  “Good. We got a lead on Vic’s office.”

  I drain the glass and hand it back as I rise to my feet. Everything stays remotely in place. “Gear up then, men.”

  Gage nods and walks to set to glass in the narrow sink. “You want Caine and Horan too?”

  “Yeah. Get the fuckers in gear. We leave in ten.” I stalk down the hall to the training room and the showers on the other side.

  Stepping from my leathers, I climb under the hot spray and wash the floating feeling away. The soap trails over my body in tantalizing lines, adding to the ache in my fucking groin. It’s what Lilah’s hair would feel like ghosting over my skin, those full lips trailing down, down ...

  I groan and wrap my hand around my rock-hard length. Pumping fast, my head falls back and my lungs burn as I come in hot lines. I press my hand to the wall. My breath saws in and out; pulse fucking going wild as my legs quiver and the water flows over me, washing my release away with the stench of alcohol and sweat.

  Too bad it’s like an empty snack and Lilah’s the full
meal.

  12

  Ruin

  TANNER AND GAGE WALK through the doors of Carnage a little ahead of me. My gut knots over and over at the peeling wallpaper, stained windows, and dust covering every surface.

  How did Lilah work here again?

  Gage glances back at me. “The schematics Tanner found has a secondary entrance into a sub-level basement.”

  “Sure.” I peer around at the empty tables and chairs. “Where?”

  Tanner walks over to the short hall off the kitchen, glowing green monitor in his hand. “Somewhere around here.” There is nothing there but a section of mildewed stone.

  Caine huffs. “I believe the Captain wanted something...a bit more concrete.” He laughs at his own joke.

  T glares at him. “You want to work the tech and I’ll flap my gums?”

  The demon just smiles, showcasing straight white teeth in his vessel’s mouth.

  “This, Caine, is why your ass is always on sentry duty,” I remind him.

  His hellfire eyes roll. “Alas ... Benched for my witty repertoire.”

  Gage motions him to silence. “Shut up, both of you, or I’ll bench you on clean-up. Together.”

  Shifter and demon fall into a begrudging quiet. For like a fucking millisecond.

  “And that’s all you could get out of her? That she has no idea where her guardian keeps his dark and ugly books on drugs, sex, and money?” T quips. “The great Ruin Wade? Stumped by a girl?”

  I flip him off and Gage chuckles darkly.

  “Leave him alone, Tanner. You and Caine are normally the ones that think with what’s between your legs. The Captain isn’t used to it.”

  Every single fucking one of them can smell the shift in my scent. The fucking lust that follows me around in a cloud of sweat and rock-dick sex.

  My lips peel back from my fangs. “You’re all fucking benched if you don’t shut the fuck up.” I push past them. The narrow wood corridor is pitch-black and musty. A derelict kitchen sports grimy appliances and grease-stained counters off to one side. Another partially closed door holds a pantry with disheveled boxes, crates, and empty rat traps. With every step, the building grows more depressing.

  Not that that should be possible.

  “Not much to look at, is it?” Tanner asks softly beside me.

  I can only nod. It’s a rare occasion when the shifter doesn’t have a smart-ass comment or jab about a situation.

  We flow through the rooms, marking all of them as clear before heading upstairs. The main VIP room is chaos of overturned chairs and broken glass from the patrons trying to flee the night before.

  “Captain.” Gage motions me over to the dais.

  A stage room sits just behind the tattered black velvet curtains. Old vanities, lined in half-used cosmetics and empty bottles of beer, take up the main area. Racks of clothes, most more see-through than not, wait near the wall of boarded up windows that once overlooked the street below.

  “Charming,” the Fae warrior says under his breath. “If this was the condition for the entertainment ...Your human may have had it quite a bit worse.”

  “No shit.”

  He pulls out a few of the drawers in the largest vanity, and lifts a clear baggie into the air. The almost sulfur-yellow powder glares out at us.

  I snarl. “Is that—”

  He wreathes the baggie in emerald fire as his eyes glow in the dimness. The Fae male scents the air, nostrils flaring as his gaze goes unfocused. “It has been cut with something ... Maybe heroin?”

  “Why mix Brightex with anything?”

  He focuses on the bag again, like waking up. “It would lessen the effects on a supe, but it would work on humans now too.”

  “Fuck.” I step back and motion the others. Caine and Horan crowd around me as Gage stands there, little bag still held high between two porcelain fingers. “Gage, get that shit into a case, man,” I command.

  He huffs, but glances at Caine.

  The demon’s hands weave in a complex rhythm. Hellfire and brimstone fill the air in a cloud as black smoke belies the appearance of a narrow, metal case. Gage opens the lid and places the bag carefully inside.

  Horan leans closer. “Is that—”

  Caine shuts the lid and poofs it back wherever he sends shit with his portal magick.

  “Less than an ounce,” Gage says into the quiet. “That is nowhere near the amounts I was expecting.”

  “Hey, Cap, you’re gonna want to see this.”

  We turn around and look at Tanner. A large armoire has been moved to the side, and he leans half-in half-out of a narrow opening at the very back of the room. I walk closer and peer into a dark stairwell leading back downstairs.

  “We going down there?” I ask T.

  “Yep.” He pops the ‘p’ with gusto.

  If my judge of distance is right, it would be right over the kitchen hall below.

  Clapping T on the back, I sigh and start down.

  My eyes glow softly at first, the pale gold light brightening the deeper into the building we go. The walls are old brick, covered in slime and mildew. It makes it hard to breathe. T swears behind me, and I know his sensitive sinuses are dealing with worse.

  At the bottom of the steps, I find the light switch and flick it on. The single bulb crackles and fights it but when it finally comes on, it illuminates a narrow space that diverges off into a network of small halls and closed doors. I motion the men and we start off.

  My hall is shorter, tighter. The damn walls leave a strange white soot over my coat sleeves, but I know better than to wipe the mold off. I open each door, and the knot in my gut worsens.

  Most of the rooms are barely usable closets of half-empty paint cans, old chairs, and ruined dishes.

  But the last door is cleaner than the others and covered with faded white paint. It’s bright in the dim lighting. Too bright, but Lilah’s fragrance, though faded, is all over it.

  I hesitate over the handle and open the door.

  Disaster.

  It’s the only word that comes to mind. But no matter how much I try, I can find no other scent but Lilah’s.

  The small bed is smashed next to the far wall and barely big enough for a child, let alone a grown woman.

  Was this an old room for her?

  Pictures of landscapes and gardens with blinding suns hang in disarray from the painted wall, like she tried to find any light in the world she lived in.

  A single chair, threadbare and barely upright, rests next to a toppled small shelf. Old dolls lay broken on the tattered rug, glass faces shattered, and a few worn fantasy paperbacks wait among the debris. I crouch and pull the top one off before flipping through it. Mildew and age waft up from the pages. But under the discarded pile of paperbacks, a single manacle on a broken chain glares up at me.

  My jaw tightens. What the actual fuck?

  “Gage,” I call.

  His soft steps breach the doorway, and he whistles. “Fucking a—”

  I nod, and heft the cold manacle up for him to see. “What does this look like to you?”

  “A holding room.”

  My exhale is closer to a growl. “That’s what I thought.” I scrub my hand over my face and rise to my feet.

  How old was she the first time her ‘guardian’ locked her in here? Hell, how could he make her parade through a crowd of bloodthirsty supernaturals in lingerie?

  I toss the book on the bed and move to walk out. Another novel, half under the discarded bedspread, draws my focus.

  An entwined young couple rests over the blood-red cover. The guy sports fangs and a petulant scowl as the girl clings to him. I pick it up gingerly.

  Lilac and sea water overpowers the old, well-turned pages. My lips tug against my will. Teen vampire romance?

  I chuckle darkly and tuck it into my waistband.

  Blackmail is always useful.

  “Ruin.” Horan’s voice is mild, easy, but I jog from the room.

  Gage and T lean over a desk sequester
ed in one of the biggest chambers on the hall. The wood is cracked and peeling varnish, but the ledgers are thick and shockingly well-kept. Horan and Caine fill the doorway behind me.

  “Seems Victor ‘Vic’ Despaciti had his hands in quite a few cookie jars,” Tanner says and begins sliding a few of the leather-bound tomes to me.

  My eyes scan the amounts going in and out of the club, and I can’t stop the whistle.

  “He was the go-to for everything from loan sharking to bootlegging,” Gage adds. “There are quite a few properties all over town. Most of them are dives, just like Carnage.” He taps a map of Lock Lake with one pale finger. “Except this one.”

  I pull the map over the open books. The address is near the county line, and right off the lake prior. It had to cost a small fortune for that kind of realty.

  “Ruin ...” I glance up at Tanner as he speaks. His tan face is empty, but there is a sheen to his grey eyes. A sheen that I don’t quite understand. He shifts. “The girl ... Lilah, is listed as the owner for the property. It’s her land. And so is Carnage.”

  Gage stares at me. “It seems your little rescue isn’t quite as innocent as we thought.”

  13

  Lilah

  WHEN I WAKE UP AROUND sunset, I leave my room and walk aimlessly through the halls. Maids and wait staff move through the corridors, dusting and polishing needlessly. They offer surprised smiles and polite nods. But all I can think about is Ruin’s words the night before.

  Hell, he is all I have thought about period.

  His damn scent in the room left me tossing and turning; heat from the fragrance left me on edge, and his words washed it away with icy terror. Succumbing to fatigue around 3AM was either a blessing or a curse.

  Every dream was filled with dead supernaturals, car crashes, hot, dark eyes, and Ruin’s hands flowing over my skin. It left my body soaked with sweat, and my hair a disaster of tangled curls from my fingers fisting in them.