by Mary Calmes
“Okay.” Ryan shrugged. “So we can blend if we look like we’re just going into a party there?”
“Yeah.”
I looked over my fellow warders, all of us. “And um, who brought club clothes?”
“Like, how dressed up are the people that go?” Ryan asked Shane.
He tipped his head like he really didn’t want to say.
“It’s not club clothes.” Kyle grimaced. “It’s more fuck-me clothes.”
“You couldn’t have said this before?” Malic griped at him.
“You said we were cutting our way in,” Kyle reminded him.
“Cut our way to the head demon,” Malic said. “We can’t fight all the way from the front door; we have to be let in. We have no idea how many are in there.”
“Especially if it’s over a dimensional door,” Jackson chimed in.
“Okay, so then if you guys go in as couples, it should work.”
“And you guys?”
“Two couples and one threesome,” Ryan suggested.
Leith groaned.
“It’s okay, honey.” Jackson grinned, wrapping an arm around Leith’s neck, his mouth close to his ear. “I’ll be gentle.”
Ryan snorted out a laugh, and I started grinning.
Leith told us all to go to hell.
“We’re already going,” Malic reminded him.
I thought Shane was going to swallow his tongue. Even Kyle, who was straight—who had, from what he said, the most beautiful woman in the world at home—could not take his eyes off Ryan Dean.
“Why did the rest of us even need to change?” Leith grumbled, squirming in his black leather pants, uncomfortable in the skin-tight, brushed silk dress shirt he had on. It was clinging to his biceps, triceps, and his rippling abdomen. He did not, as a rule, wear anything remotely like what he had on. Ever. Leith was quiet, reserved, and liked cargo pants and denim shirts, jeans and cotton T-shirts. In his current outfit, complete with black leather boots, he looked stunning but really out of his comfort zone.
“Because we all need to fit in,” Malic growled, dressed like I was in a suit, his Prada, mine a Hugo Boss.
“Why do you guys get to be dressed like that?” Leith was really irritated, and I was on the verge of smacking him.
“Because we’re tops, sweetheart,” Malic informed him. “The rest of you do both right?”
“You know what, Mal—” Leith began.
“Just,” Jackson chuckled, grabbing Leith, yanking him up beside him, “don’t get all in a twist for nothing.”
Jackson himself was dressed in the kind of leather pants that laced up the sides and up the crotch. I couldn’t tell if he was wearing underwear or not, and it wasn’t my place to ask. The black Lycra T-shirt he was wearing did not reach the top of the red pants, instead showing off the treasure trail from under his navel to right above his groin. The pants hugged his slim hips, riding sinfully low and seductive. His hair was tousled like he’d just gotten out of bed, and the beard and mustache were very sexy.
“Who do I get?” I teased.
They all pointed at Ryan.
“You’re the only one people are gonna believe,” Malic yawned, moving to stand between Jackson and Leith, separating them, hand fisting in each of their hair. “He overdid it.”
“He’s right,” Jackson chuckled, pulling free of Malic’s grip. “Who knew that store even had stuff like that in there?”
I rolled my head to look at Ryan Dean. What the hell…?
He was in chaps, and they were not like any I had ever seen in my life. They were red with some swirling design down the sides embroidered in gold, and they belted around his hips. He was wearing a thong so that his cock was nestled inside, most of it covered, but his perfect, round, taut ass was on full display. The chaps were hot, ridiculously so, and the fact that it was all he was wearing was enough to make him the absolute focus of any room he walked into.
“How are you gonna fight in that?” I called over to the man preening in the kitchen, admiring his own reflection in the sliding glass door.
He turned to look at me. “What?”
“Fight. You. In that,” I said irritably. “Jesus, Ry.”
I had been surprised at the store Shane had taken us to at nine o’clock at night. Kyle was not.
“Lexington is a very cosmopolitan city, you know. We’re not out in the damn boondocks.”
But I didn’t know.
“I can do a lot of things in this.” Ryan waggled his eyebrows at me.
I threw up my hands, turned, and bumped into Shane.
“Can we go?” I barked, annoyed for whatever reason that he was leering at my friend.
“He’s really beautiful,” Shane said under his breath. “His hearth must be really hot.”
Julian Nash was a handsome man, but not beautiful. He was tall and muscular and had dark blue-black eyes and glasses. He was not the kind of man you saw first; he was the one you noticed last. He was the guy interested in talking to you, learning your secrets.
“Julian’s….” What could I say? “Hey,” I said to Ryan as he joined us. “Describe Julian to Shane.”
He turned and smiled warmly. “Julian is the only man who I get down on my hands and knees and wiggle my ass for.”
Shane caught his breath, and Leith finally let go of his tension and laughed.
I grabbed Ryan’s hand and tugged him after me toward the front door. “C’mon, pretty boy. Let’s go.”
We had to take two cars for the long drive from Nicholasville to Fayette County. The ride down the two-lane country roads was long and lulling, and I gave up and fell asleep. When I was finally shaken awake, I realized that we were parked and everyone was out of the car but me.
After getting out, I put my jacket back on to cover the sheaths on my back. I was not carrying my swords—Kyle was, under his leather duster—but I had Ryan’s katana and Jackson’s rapier. Malic was packing his spatha and Leith’s kilij under his jacket. My hook swords were not discreet, small weapons. I normally carried them criss-crossed on my back in a double scabbard. Kyle, who was dressed like someone out of the Matrix—which amused the hell out of Jackson for some reason—had offered to carry in my swords. There was no guard at the door checking for weapons. It was Sodom and Gomorrah in there. There were demons throwing the party, after all. Weapons were not a consideration. And besides, I was certain, as I eased Ryan forward in front of me, my hand on the small of his back, that no one would be giving anyone but my fellow warder the time of day.
As I suspected, the doorman took one look at Ryan Dean and waved us forward to the front of the line.
Ryan did his walk, the runway stride, the strut, head back, wet lips parted, glittering eyes forward, doing the glide that made him look fluid and boneless. It was impressive, and I wondered, just for a minute, how Julian dealt with everyone wanting a piece of Ryan Dean.
He reached the front and tipped his head up, his eyes drifting slowly open, the look wicked and hot and molten.
I saw the doorman shiver.
“Welcome,” the man barely got out. I was sure that with his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth was making it hard to articulate. “Please step inside.”
“Thank you,” Ryan purred, moving by him.
No one saw me, no one saw Malic, and most importantly, no one saw Kyle. We moved through the crowd and people made a path for Ryan.
“What the hell,” Leith grumbled behind me.
Apparently he and Jackson were groped quite a bit as we moved through the mob, especially Leith with his long hair trailing behind him.
“It’s ’cause you’re pretty,” Jackson chuckled even as hands slid over him, grabbed his ass, and tried to stop him.
“How come no one’s grabbin’ at Ry?”
“It’s the walk.” Malic was grinning when I looked over my shoulder at him. “It’s the ‘I’m too good for you’ walk. No one would dare put their hands on him.”
And it occurred to me that he was ri
ght. Ryan was movie star handsome, so no one even tried to touch him. Maybe before Julian he had been lonely instead of busy.
Once we reached the back, I helped Ryan up on a low platform to dance. The trance music was not something I had ever liked, but Ryan had been gyrating in clubs for years, from New York to Paris to Rome to Tokyo and back at home in the city by the bay. It was second nature to him.
The hostess came, and we ordered a round of drinks. She offered other things, party favors, and Malic smiled at her and said maybe later. She looked concerned until Jackson took her hand and stroked over her knuckles, smiling up at her at the same time. She was charmed by the time she left.
“I wasn’t charming?” Malic asked.
“You sound like a cop,” I told my friend.
“How?”
“I don’t know.” I sighed, smiling at him. “But you come off like a vice detective or something.”
“I’m just not pretty like the rest of you.” He smirked.
I wasn’t either, not like Leith and Jackson and Ryan. They were stunning. Malic and I were more handsome, if one needed to apply an adjective to us. We sort of blended into the background, forgettable, but neither of us a breathtaking beauty.
“Don’t kid yourselves.” Jackson yawned, smiling at me.
I had no idea what that meant.
Shane looked uncomfortable, and so I took a seat next to him. Malic sat and pulled Leith down into his lap. It looked odd to me, but it wouldn’t to anyone else. The only one who belonged in the big man’s lap was his hearth, Dylan Shaw. Dylan would have been wriggling around, trying to wedge Malic’s groin between his cheeks. I liked watching my friend get all flustered by his young, irrepressible mate.
I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it didn’t take long. Again, Ryan was like a beacon, and there wasn’t a lot of him left to the imagination.
“Here we go,” Jackson said under his breath as one man, flanked by another two, approached our table.
He stood for a minute, looking Ryan up and down, leering, before he passed him to face… me. Why it was always me, I had no idea. Yes, I was the oldest at thirty-five, but the stranger didn’t know that.
“Hello.” The man extended his hand, “I’m Breka. I own this club. I would love to have you and your friends join me for a private party.”
“Breka,” I said, getting up, Malic moving in behind the other two men, Jackson beside him. “I have a lot to talk to you about.”
He squinted at me at the same time the man behind him gasped.
When he tried to turn, I grabbed his bicep and yanked him sideways, throwing him down onto the suede-covered sectional I had been sitting on a moment earlier.
Malic stepped back and, wielding the spatha powerfully, he easily cleaved the demon in half before a hole opened in the floor and he dropped the creature into it. Jackson’s movement was similar but more artful, with finesse. The demon’s throat was torn open with a quick slash of the rapier before he too was dropped into a black hole that swallowed him fast.
Between the thumping, driving music, the ferocious wall of conversation, and the crowd, no one saw a thing. I stood towering over Breka, and I saw him trembling. Squatting down, I took the scabbard Kyle passed me at the same time.
“Holy fuck,” Shane said beside me. “What the hell was that?”
“That’s the warder void,” Jackson told him. “Just like you—”
“I have never seen anything like that.” Shane’s voice was shaky. “We…. no one dies like that. It’s bloody and messy, and… now I get why you thought we could get in and out of here without creating a huge scene. I had no idea.”
“Jesus,” Kyle said, and I could feel his eyes studying my profile. “Our sentinel said that some clutches were more powerful—the older the warders, the longer they stay together—but I ain’t never seen the likes of you all.”
“Breka,” I addressed the demon now quivering before me. “I want to talk to you about Elliot Locke and about Emir and Arcan, and I want to see the warder Tarin that you have in your possession. Do you understand?”
He nodded.
“I won’t touch you if you do what I say.”
More furious nodding.
“Now which way are we following you?”
He pointed left.
“Okay, you tell Ry which way to walk, and then we’ll follow him, all right?”
“Yes.” He almost choked on the word.
Breka rose first; I walked at his side with Ryan leading the way. We moved as a single unit through the crowd. No one bothered to ask Breka where he was going. They could all see. He was following the guy with the gorgeous ass.
“Tell me how you do that.”
“Do what?” I asked Shane as we walked.
“The warder void, you called it. Tell me how you make it appear.”
“We don’t. It just is. I thought all warders were the same. I thought they all dealt the same death to every demon: the hole to the pit.”
“No, not every clutch is as strong as yours, Marcus. Did you know that every clutch has a center? Just like every warder has a hearth who is their omphalos, their center, every clutch has the same thing in a single warder. Kill that one warder, you destroy the clutch.”
I stopped walking because, really, there was just no way he was suddenly this fount of information. Turning, I found a woman, not Shane Harris at all.
“Moira,” I said at the same time I saw the dagger.
I spun as she thrust forward, felt the blade drag across my arm, and watched, helplessly, as it was buried deep in Malic’s chest. He had moved fast to put himself between the lethal stroke and Ryan’s vulnerable back. The witch had aimed for me, her momentum had carried her toward Ryan, and she had ended up catching my friend.
“Malic!” Leith yelled, and there was screaming around us instantly.
I dove forward and caught him as he dropped to the floor, Leith’s kilij and the spatha flying free, clattering away from us as we fell together. The blood was all I could see.
“Marcus!” Leith roared, and I turned my head to see the witch coming for me. Her blade was raised, she had talons instead of hands, and I had no way to defend myself from either. My swords that Kyle had thrown toward me before he ran were on the other side of Malic, and I couldn’t reach them. I had one arm under his back, the other over the gaping hole in his heart, pressing down to stem the flow of blood out of his body, but I moved as far as I could trying to grasp one.
She reached me, for me, and I did all I could.
I took a breath and released the pulse of power.
She screamed and tensed, slowed just enough, hesitated for a second, and I saw the flash along the blade, the outline of the steel, the way the light slid over the length as my hook sword, wielded by Ryan Dean, came and took the head of the witch.
Hot blood hit me like a sprinkler, and then the body flew into me, knocking me back and away from Malic under its weight.
“Marcus!” Jackson cried out my name, and I shook my head, trying to get my bearings. It was like I was in a dream, not in control of my muscles, my speed, or my strength as everything moved around me.
There was so much blood pumping from the headless torso of the witch, and I slid through it, slipped over the marble floor as I scrambled back to Malic’s side. I peeled off my jacket as I moved, drew Ryan’s katana from my back, and tossed it to him, then did the same with Jackson’s rapier, throwing it to the other warder. I yanked the scabbards off that had held the blades, then my shirt, and bunching it up, shoved it over Malic’s wound and pressed down hard. I grabbed him, cradled him tight, held him close, terrified because he was turning gray, because of the fall of his head, the heaviness of his limbs.
I opened the channel, screamed my need for my sentinel, and prayed even as I heard the shriek from the other side of the room.
“Hurry, Marcus,” Jackson yelled again, dropping into his stance, the rapier gleaming in the low light.
I looked for Kyle and saw h
im running with the rest of the terrified crowd for the exit. I had no idea when the witch had traded places with Shane, had no idea if he was dead or alive, and didn’t really even care. Only Malic mattered.
“Jackson, call Raph!” I roared, but I heard the shriek then and knew there was no time.
I had seen no traces of a dimensional door until that second. But we all saw the flood of creatures skittering across the floor toward us on their insect-like legs, their bodies all claws and teeth. The witch had brought racer demons with her from the pit, and they would tear us to shreds just by their sheer number.
