by Lia Black
In the shower, his clothing and glamour shed, Kayle touched a little bruise left behind on his hip where Ramon had sucked on the skin. He swallowed back the threatening sick that burned up from his stomach, and leaned into the wall to maintain his equilibrium. This death shouldn’t be affecting him this much.
There came a pounding that he’d first thought was his pulse, then realized it was somebody knocking at his door.
“Derek?” Had he felt badly for the way they’d parted tonight? Perhaps he had decided to check up on Kayle, just to make sure he was all right. Kayle wrapped a towel around his hips and drew upon glamour to mask his real appearance. His hand was shaking as he reached for the doorknob. If it was Derek, he might not be able to maintain his cool facade for very long.
“Derek?” It wasn’t Derek, though, when he opened the door. It was those men from the lobby. Kayle felt his heart shrivel under the weight of his disappointment. Stupid, really. Why had he even considered that Derek would be giving him a second thought tonight?
“Are you lost?” he asked, ignoring the fact that he was mostly naked and dripping wet in front of a group of complete strangers.
“Nope. I think we’ve got the right place.” The man at the front of the group grinned. There was a gap between his front teeth. He was tall, though not as tall as the larger, dark-skinned man behind him. Broad-shouldered, he had graying hair cut very close to his scalp. Kayle’s mind took in each detail with a slow, startling clarity.
The dark-skinned man was the youngest. Undoubtedly the strongest, but not the leader of this group.
Two other men, smaller; one could even be called petite. He had tiny, dark eyes like a weasel.
The leader’s eyes were blue.
Kayle had experienced this before. He remembered what the others had looked like too—those men who had killed his mother. These were not the same men, but they wore the same dark weave of malice. He started to slam the door, but his recognition of danger had come too late.
With some silent signal, the four men rushed him, shoving him back into the room and closing the door. Kayle stumbled, tripping over the towel as it came loose. He fell back onto the bed and struggled to get up, but they were already upon him. He was crowded by the walls they made with their bodies. A man grabbed hold of each of Kayle’s shoulders. He tried again to pull away—if he could only get to his feet, he could make it to the door—but one of the men holding him wrenched back his arm. The pain radiated through his shoulder, making his fingers go numb and weakening him with a wave of nausea. Kayle sucked in a noisy breath, choking as he let it out. Kayle had no choice but to let them drag him to the mattress.
“We don’t want your kind here, and especially not infiltrating our police.” The gray-haired man said.
Shit. That’s why he thought one looked familiar; Kayle had seen him the day Derek had shown him around the precinct.
Kayle opened his mouth, hoping that there was something he could say to convince them to let him go, but the gray-haired cop pounded down into Kayle’s belly with his fist. The punch took his breath away, driving into him so hard he could swear his stomach met his spine. Black stars danced at the edges of his vision and he couldn’t catch his breath. This couldn’t be happening.
The men holding his arms loosened up enough to let the cop pull him roughly into a sitting position. It had the effect of bringing a gout of blood up and out of his mouth, splashing down across Kayle’s lap and over the man’s boots. Behind him, some piece of his consciousness could hear the sounds of someone rummaging through his things.
“Mother fucker! You just ruined my goddamn boots!”
This time the fist made contact with his jaw, snapping Kayle’s head back. His teeth clacked together and the vertebrae in his neck popped. He blinked, trying to get his bearings as the room spun, colors smudging. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flash of metal as a hand swung towards him again, the brass knuckles catching him on the side of the face. Kayle’s ears squealed as his jaw came unhinged with the blow. Pain radiated up his temple and down his throat.
The side of his face was on fire. Kayle tasted blood and his own tears, streaming from his eyes and rolling into his open mouth. Through the shock and the flare of instinct, a tiny piece of reason remained. There were too many of them, too spread out for him to safely subdue, even if he could catch his breath to do so. He couldn’t risk fighting these men. They were police, and more importantly, human. As much as the Clan looked down on them, human beings were favored far above his kind.
He couldn’t speak now, nothing intelligible at least. Kayle tried to shake his head, holding up his hands as he ducked from their blows, silently begging them to stop.
For a moment, they did.
Through a blurry haze of blood and tears, Kayle watched a shadow streak over his head. A crowbar.
They really did mean to kill him.
Kayle rolled to his back, raising his arm to ward off the blow from the heavy steel bar as it was coming down. He couldn’t concentrate to hold his masking. The glamour he’d donned peeled back from his hand, melting into ribbons of pale light, sliding down his arm. Behind it, his talons and patterned skin were revealed. He wasn’t going to be able to keep the rest on for long. His body was taking control, instincts winning over mental discipline and custom tech.
“Oh, you gonna turn into some monster and fight us?” the gray-haired cop leaned down; his breath stunk of alcohol and whatever he’d had for dinner. He was close enough that Kayle heard the slight tremor of uncertainty in his voice.
“Turn him over.”
The world spun like a muddy kaleidoscope, making Kayle retch as two men flipped him onto his stomach on the bed. His arms were pinned out to the sides. One was already a blue fire of pain and there was enough pressure through his shoulders that it threatened to dislocate his other arm as well.
“Tough guy with the big tattoo, huh? Gives me something to look at when I fuck your Variant ass.”
Through his stuttering heartbeat, Kayle heard the unmistakable jingle of a belt buckle and the growl of a zipper coming down.
One of the men holding him down started giggling. The sound was disorienting and wrong. They were enjoying this. Killing him was entertainment.
“Holy shit, he’s really gonna’ do it!”
Kayle felt a knee pushing down hard between his legs, forcing them apart as the thug put all his weight onto the bed.
“You fuck that little faggot like this before you killed him? You suck out his blood while he was sucking your cock?”
“Yeah, suck my cock!” The giggling man began fidgeting, trying to undo his pants with one hand as he held Kayle’s arm with the other. There was another noise, the sound of things falling onto the floor as someone knocked things off the dresser.
“Hey Ollie, stop messin’ shit up and come hold this asshole. I wanna’ spit-roast this murdering motherfucker,” the cop said from behind him.
Kayle might have let them assault him then. Let them inadvertently feed him more power with their orgasms. But it wouldn’t be considered self-defense when they ended up dead… And they would die, because the first and last time someone had tried to do this to him, when he was just five years old, they ended up as a bloody paste on the wall.
Kayle fought to keep himself from going back to that dark place.
… A child, seeing his mother murdered. He hadn’t meant to make a sound but he could no longer hold back his sobs. One man had lingered, then stayed behind. Big hands, covered in his mother’s blood pulled him out of his hiding place— grabbed his head and yanked so hard, Kayle was sure he meant to pull his head off. Then the grubby, fat fingers, shoving into his mouth, tasting like every horrible thing he could imagine. Pushing so hard down his throat he nearly passed out…clothes being torn off, those fingers cold and wet prodding below as he was bent over a table, forced to see his mother’s dead eyes watching him, watching his mortification…
“What the hell…”
&nbs
p; “Holy fuckin’ fuck!” The weasel man was not giggling anymore.
Kayle’s wings unfolded from his back, rising from the camouflage of the tattoo. Made of muscle and bone, they spread wide, sending bodies toppling back into furniture and walls.
What he’d done as a child to that man…how he’d killed him a dozen times over… Kayle’s intellectual mind knew he couldn’t let that happen here. He pushed himself onto his hands and knees, hoping they’d be smart enough, or fearful enough, to get the hell out before he couldn’t control himself anymore. He’d eaten himself drunk the night before with Ramon. Sated and strong, it would’ve lasted him several days, unless he used the rest of it now, to rip these men apart.
He heard the sound of thundering feet on wood as two of the men ran away, stinking of piss and terror. That left two, and he prayed they’d be smart enough to follow.
They weren’t.
The dark-skinned man who’d been pinning his left shoulder came down hard across his back and one wing with a wooden baseball bat, at the same time, Kayle felt something sharp, sliding into his skin between his ribs. A rush of burning fluid filled his lung. With a snap of one wing, Kayle sent the man who stabbed him flying back against the wall. The bat came down again, this time across the back of his skull. Black and red converged across his vision, static buzzed through his brain. He’d waited too long, trying to hold back to keep from killing them… now, it seemed, he would be the one to die.
From somewhere outside of himself he heard a man yell, then a crack, muffled by the pressure in his ears. The bat dropped, bouncing harmlessly off of his back…or maybe he just couldn’t feel it anymore. More yelling and another crack, then someone calling his name.
Kayle cracked open one eye and saw Derek’s familiar face, contorted through the blur of his faltering vision. He wanted to say his name, or maybe smile and reassure him, but his damn mouth wouldn’t work. Instead, he let his tail flick, just a twitch at the end, saw Derek notice it and nod his head, before he had to shut his eyes.
So he had come, after all. Better late than never.
CHAPTER NINE
Derek felt like he’d swallowed a lump of lead, as he dropped Kayle at the curb of the Bentley Hotel, and drove away. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that Kayle might be dealing with his emotions by avoiding them. One-night paid companion or not, he’d seen the look on Kayle’s face when he recognized the body hanging over the tunnel entrance. How could he not be affected by that?
And Derek had taken Kayle’s responses at face value, never considering that he was trying to dissociate himself long enough to do his job. He’d done it himself, but with alcohol. Well, now he felt like a first class asshole.
Derek stopped in front of his own apartment, trying to convince himself that they would work it all out in the morning, but he knew he’d never get to sleep if he left it like this. He turned around and drove back to the hotel. Even if Kayle didn’t answer his door, at least Derek could feel better with the knowledge that he’d at least made an effort.
Two men running out of the Bentley nearly knocked him over. One stumbled and kept going but Derek managed to catch hold of the other man’s jacket, swinging him around. He expected to see some junkie or twenty year old thief. He didn’t expect to see a face he’d seen nearly every day for the past seven years.
“Sapetti?”
Officer Sapetti flinched, his eyes wide with recognition, before he spun free and kept running, leaving his empty coat in Derek’s hand.
Shit. Derek had a very bad feeling about this. He fought the urge to go after him. If they were running, it was for a reason, which likely meant that whatever they had come to do here had already been done, or something had gone horribly wrong.
Derek burst through the hotel doors, the tempered glass clanging like a gong.
“Call the police!” he yelled, startling the clerk awake as he ran through the lobby, pistol drawn. He took the stairs two at a time and didn’t stop running until he got to Perrine’s door. It wasn’t fully closed and Derek didn’t need to see or hear anything to know that meant there was trouble. He already knew enough about Perrine to know that leaving his room unlocked wouldn’t have been on purpose. Clicking the safety off of his gun, he kicked the door open.
For a moment, Derek was disoriented, wondering if he was in the right room. There was a bath towel crumpled on the floor halfway between the entrance and the bed. Dresser drawers had been pulled out then tossed aside, their contents strewn all over the room. There were scuff-marks from dirty shoes on the floor and...blood. A small puddle of it near the bed, streaks on the walls and ceiling, splatters across the once-white coverlet.
A bald man in black leather was standing on the other side of the bed, raising up a wooden bat, already smudged with red.
“Hands up!” He pointed his gun at the man, but the man ignored him. He continued his swing, bringing the bat down and Derek shot. The weapon’s recoil sent a tremor through to his wrists. He saw the moment of impact past the blur of heat from the barrel of his gun. There was a small explosion of splinters and flesh as the bullet went through the back of the man’s hand, lodging itself in the wooden bat.
The bat fell, landing with a muffled thump on something spread across the bed.
“My fuckin’ hand, man!” the man cried out.
Derek began to take a step forward as the man dropped to his knees, clutching his mangled had to his chest. But movement to Derek’s right caught his attention.
Another man with a crowbar came around the corner. Derek pointed his gun, his pulse beating through his neck. When he made eye-contact with the man, Derek nearly lowered his gun out of habit.
“Meyers?”
Sergeant Abe Meyers, a ten-year veteran on the force, a man he knew.
Meyers stopped moving, but did not drop his weapon.
Derek’s hands tightened around the grip of his gun. He willed his voice to remain calm and authoritative. Letting his emotions take over was not going to end this peacefully. “Put it down, Abe.”
Meyers pointed the crowbar at the creature stretched across the bed.
“You fucking support this?”
No, he couldn’t look at that. If that was Perrine, Derek wasn’t ready to take it all in yet.
“I don’t support murder,” Derek said. “Now put your weapon down, slowly, and show me your hands.”
“You support a murderer. He killed that rent boy, and all of the other hookers.”
“We don’t know that. Just chill out and put the weapon down so we can talk about it.” Derek noticed Meyer’s fly was open and belt was hanging loose. He fought back the acid that boiled up from his stomach. Vigilante justice wasn’t right, but Derek couldn’t stop himself from thinking about how good it would feel to hurt this man right now.
Meyers began to crouch down with the crowbar, his icy blue eyes locked onto Derek’s. Alarm bells were going off in his head. Derek could almost see the gears turning in Meyer’s brain. Was he calculating his chances of escape?
Derek willed his eyes to drop, checking out Meyer’s posture. He was on his toes when he should be on his knees. One hand was braced on the floor above the crowbar, the other was curled inward.
Derek was already moving as Meyers charged at him. The gleam of brass knuckles flashed across his fist as he threw all of his weight into his punch. Derek spun, hitting the wall. Aiming low, he squeezed the trigger.
Meyers went down with a yelp, his knee buckling as the bullet shattered the bone. He dropped, moaning into the open doorway as Derek heard thundering feet coming at them from down the hall.
Derek made eye-contact with the first uniformed officers, guns drawn aiming at him.
Derek raised his hands, his gun dangling from one finger hooked through the trigger guard.
Lyle Peterson came racing up from behind.
“Put down your weapon!” He yelled, his gun leveled at Derek.
Derek crouched, setting his gun down and getting to his k
nees, elbows wide as he pressed his hands to the back of his head.
Peterson blinked a few times, and lowered his weapon. “Derek?”
“Perrine’s hurt real bad,” Derek said, maintaining his prisoner pose but jerking his head towards the bed.
Peterson spoke to two of the uniformed officers who walked past Derek to the man he’d shot in the hand.
“Go.” Peterson nodded to Derek as two more officers dealt with Meyers in the doorway.
Derek scrambled to the bed to check on Kayle. There was so much blood; deep crimson blossomed from a wound to the back of his skull, coloring his pale hair red. But there was so much else…he nearly didn’t recognize him. Huge, leathery wings, one of them broken; and… horns. Two sets of them curving back over his skull like a crown of bone. His mouth was open, sharp teeth, blood and drool soaking the mattress as his glassy gaze— irises red in a sea of inky black— found Derek’s face.
“Perrine…Kayle…oh shit…can you hear me?” Something over Kayle’s shoulder caught his eye and he realized it was a tail, patterns fading deeper shades of bronze into the black tip. The end of it flicked like a cat’s. He nodded, looking back at Kayle as Peterson crouched beside him, and Kayle’s eyes slid shut.
“Is this Perrine? Shit. Derek, if you need me to take over…”
Derek realized what he was saying but pushed it back. He wasn’t going to lose another partner, regardless of their personal relationship. “No. I’ll take care of him.” He knew a hospital was out of the question. People died in the overcrowded waiting room, and they certainly weren’t going to take a—whatever the hell Perrine was— ahead of a human being.
