by Reinke, Sara
“Or what? You going to get inside my head again, make me do it anyway?” Elías shrugged his shoulder, dislodging Valien’s grasp. “I don’t want to fuck with you, Cadana. I keep telling you—I’m not the bad guy. I’m trying to help.”
“And we keep telling you—we don’t need your goddamn help,” a familiar voice snapped. Jackson had been sitting somewhat out of Lina’s view in the waiting room, but when he stood up, towering over most everyone around him, there was neither any missing or mistaking him. She noticed a young woman in the chair beside him—black, beautiful, with a shock of unruly curls framing her head. Lina wondered if this was the elusive Taya, but realized there’d be no pleasantries or introductions that afternoon.
Clearly Jackson had been able to see Elías and Valien’s exchange from his vantage, and to follow along at least in part by reading Elías’s lips. As he tromped toward Elías now, his mouth turned in a disagreeable line. “We wouldn’t be in this mess if it wasn’t for you, if you hadn’t…”
His voice faltered when he saw Lina, and he stumbled to a startled halt. Lifting his hands, he reverted to sign language in his absolute, stunned surprise. Lina? He glanced at the badge dangling around her neck, then her proximity to Elías. What the fuck is going on? What are you doing here?
I was offered a job, she signed back evenly. I took it.
The disapproving cleft between his brows deepened. Is that why Brandon tried to leave this morning? Does he know about you taking a new job? Does Mama?
Do either of them know about you getting involved in a goddamn gang war? she snapped back, her movements sharp and angry. Have you lost your mind, Jackie? How the hell did you get yourself into this mess?
You have no idea what’s going on here, Lina, Jackson told her coolly.
Trust me, Jackie, she thought drily. I have a pretty goddamn good idea.
“Come on, Lina,” Elías said quietly, touching her sleeve, drawing her attention, just as she moved to sign back a sharp retort. “We’ve got work to do.”
****
Hey, chota… Téo Ruiz’s voice inside Lina’s mind was gravely and frail, as if the young man in the hospital bed struggled valiantly to remain conscious once he realized his company. Long…time no see.
He spoke to Elías, but had opened his mind to them both, and his gaze swept blearily toward Lina, his brows crimping as he struggled to get a clear look at her. One of his eyes was swollen shut with contusions, along with his nose and the entire left side of his face. He’d been intubated, an endotracheal tube inserted down his throat and into his windpipe, connecting him to a mechanical ventilator. Another tube, a nasogastric drain and feeding variety, had been fed through his nose into his gut. A long, loosely coiled drainage hose ran from beneath his gown at his ribs to a chest suctioning collection console on the bedside floor. IV tubes and electrode wires led to a bevy of machines flanking either side of the bed, dripping constant streams of fluid and medication into his veins, monitoring his heart rate and other vital signs.
Who…who’s la chilla? Pepe croaked with a feeble nod, little more than a shudder, at Lina. Despite the tubes, the tape, the swelling, bruising and cuts, somehow he managed to wrinkle back the corner of his mouth in a quick but discernable smirk. Wait…don’t tell me…you….you’ve found your… pareja too.
“This is Officer Angelina Jones,” Elías said aloud. If he felt moved with pity or horror at the younger man’s battered state, it reflected in neither his face nor his voice; cool as granite and all business, he strode toward the bed. “She’s working with me to investigate your attack.” When Téo’s uninjured eye rolled back to look at her again, Elías added, “She’s Jackson Jones’s sister.”
Another fleeting hint of a smile. Puñeta, he muttered. Doesn’t that…figure? His eyelid drooped closed and for a long moment, there was only the soft mechanical hiss of the ventilator, the quiet beeping of his intravenous machines and life support monitors.
“Téo.” Elías spoke softly. “Tejano gave you a message for Valien, didn’t he? That’s why he left you alive—the only reason you’re not zipped up in a body bag, head first in a drawer down at the coroner’s office like your friends. He needed you to tell Valien something—a challenge, a threat, something. What was it?”
Without opening his eye, Téo groaned, Fuck you, chota.
“A lot more people are going to die unless you talk to me,” Elías warned, hooking his hands against the bedrail and leaning over.
That’s your fault, Teo seethed. Valien…did you a favor…saved your sorry ass.
“I know that,” Elías said. “Now I’m trying to save his—by stopping this before it goes any further. You saw what Tejano did to Carlos and Lopito—what do you think he’s going to do to Valien when he gets a hold of him? To your parents, Téo? Your friends?” Then, speaking almost directly into Téo’s ear, he added, “To Pilar?”
Fuck you! Téo snapped, and the telemetry monitor above his bed began chirping out a frantic, frenzied measure as his heart pounded angrily. You think you’re so goddamn smart…so bad ass. You know where Pilar was last night, chota? She was dry-humping Brandon Noble in the middle of Duke’s!
Lina was hard pressed to decide who recoiled from the bed faster in wide-eyed shock, her or Elías.
“What?” she gasped, stricken, just as Elías drew in a sharp, wounded, simultaneous breath.
“You’re lying,” he whispered.
That’s right, you…stupid fuck… Téo said to Elías. She said he’s her pareja. He had…his tongue down her goddamn throat…his hands all over her…and she couldn’t get enough. She was practically begging for it…for him to fuck her right there… He trembled in bed, the closest approximation to laughter he could physically muster. Looks like you’ve been replaced…just like you replaced me. Tell me…chota…how…how does it feel?
“You’re lying!” Elías seethed, grabbing hold of the ventilator hose, closing his fist fiercely around it, cutting off Téo’s ability to breathe. Again, the telemetry monitors went wild, and Téo’s uninjured eye widened as he abruptly struggled for air. He writhed weakly in the bed, uttering strangled, sodden sounds until at last—little more than five seconds later—Elías opened his hand, allowing airflow again.
“Tell me what Tejano said,” he snapped at Téo. “Tell me what he said, you punk-ass pendejo, or so help me Christ, I’ll—!”
The door flew open behind them and Elías stepped away from the bed as a nurse hurried in. She paused, sparing them a puzzled glance, but visibly relaxed once she’d caught sight of their badges.
“Excuse me,” she said, checking first the telemetry monitor, then working her way through the tangled network of tubes and cables connecting Téo to different machines, making sure everything was alright.
“It’s alright,” Elías told her, his brows still furrowed as he turned to leave. “We’re through here anyway.”
****
Elías didn’t say anything to Lina on the elevator ride back to the hospital’s ground floor. He stood beside her the entire time, his jaw clenched, the tendons in his neck visibly strained above the collar of his shirt. His face was a mixed mask of outrage, disbelief, humiliation and pain—and she could completely understand.
Because right about now, that sums up how I’m feeling, too.
“Hey.” She let him get into the car, slamming his door, before speaking. Reaching out, she touched his hand, laying hers lightly against his as he reached for the gear shift. He stiffened at her touch and started to pull away, but she grasped him lightly, firmly. “Hey,” she said again. “He was just messing with you.”
The tension that gripped his shoulders drained, and when he turned to her, he looked unhappy and hurt, his brows lifted, his eyes round and mournful. “No. He wasn’t.”
He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his cell phone. “I wasn’t exactly honest with you earlier. Valien and his corillo…they don’t dislike me just because I’m not a feeder. I’ve been…seeing one of them,
Valien’s sister, Pilar, for around a month now. It’s sort of forbidden, human and Nahual relationships, even with their feeders. Pilar’s always told me it didn’t matter to her…that she didn’t give a shit what her family thought about it, but they hate me for it. Like I’ve ruined her somehow.”
“But I thought you said they helped dump the bodies Pepe Cervantes and the others into the canals,” she said and he nodded.
“They did. And Valien’s regretted it ever since. He doesn’t give a shit about me. He agreed to do it because Pilar begged him to.” His voice faltered and he sighed. “I got this weird message from her late last night. That’s how I know Téo wasn’t just fucking around. Listen.”
Holding out his hand, he offered the phone to her, and she drew it to her ear, listening. In the voicemail playback, she heard a young woman’s voice, choked and ragged with tears.
“I’m sorry,” Pilar pleaded. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.” She’d paused, her breath fluttering. “I didn’t mean to do this…not to you. Anyone but you.” Her voice faded. Then, in a miserable hush: “I’m so sorry. I just…I can’t be with you. Not anymore. They know now and I just…oh, Elías, I’m sorry!”
“What does she mean ‘they know now?’” Lina asked Elías. “Téo said something about Brandon Noble. He called him something. I didn’t understand.”
“Her pareja,” Elías supplied. “It means her life mate…another Nahual like her…the one she’s supposed to be with. I thought it was just bullshit. She told me it was, but…”
His voice grew ragged and strained, his eyes so filled with bewildered hurt, Lina’s heart might have broken for him—had it already not been breaking just fine all on it’s own…because she understood.
Breeding pair. That’s what Michel had called this same phenomenon, and all at once, she understood why she’d become unable to please Brandon sexually, as if his body had been deliberately, stubbornly preventing him from finding enjoyment or release with her. As if it had known something his heart and mind had not…or at least, hadn’t been willing to admit.
He needs to be with one of his own kind, Augustus had told her.
He was right, then, she realized in dismay. Oh, my God, that son of a bitch…he’s been right all along.
“I…uh…I haven’t been exactly honest with you, either, Elías,” she said, drawing his gaze. “See, Brandon and I…we…”
When he realized she was about to cry, his brows lifted. “Hey,” he said quietly. He may not have had telepathy, but in that moment, he seemed to understand anyway. “I’m sorry, Lina.”
It didn’t matter that she’d broken things off already with him. The pain still ran ragged, sharp and deep, piercing her to the core.
Elías touched her face, his hand warm against her cheek, and in that miserably vulnerable moment, she found she had no defense against that sort of empathy. Because he knows how I feel…exactly how I feel. He knows how much this hurts.
“Goddamn it,” she whispered as a single tear slipped down her cheek, but before she could wipe it away, fervent and proud, Elías brushed the pad of his thumb against her skin, catching it. As she looked into his eyes, her mother’s voice echoed in her mind.
You want yourself a man, honey—a good one, at that, and I suspect you’re looking at him.
“I’m sorry,” he said gently.
“Yeah. Me, too.” Lina ducked away from his hand, pressing her lips together in a thin, defiant line, because her mother was right—Elías was a good man. It didn’t take telepathy for her to know it with certainty.
With a heavy sigh, he reached for the ignition, firing up the Charger’s engine. Then, with a sideways glance in her direction, he said, “Have I mentioned yet that my old man owns a Cuban restaurant over in Miami? Or that his mojitos have been named the best in south Florida for the past seven years running?” She shook her head and he arched his brow, adding, “And that I know the recipe?”
Lina managed a smile, swatting at her eyes with her fingertips, smearing away her lingering tears. “What a coincidence,” she remarked as he dropped the car in gear. “All of a sudden, I’m thirsty as hell.”
To be continued…
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
“Definitely an author to watch.” That's how Romantic Times Book Reviews magazine describes Sara Reinke. New York Times bestselling author Karen Robards calls Reinke “a new paranormal star” and Love Romances and More hails her as “a fresh new voice to a genre that has grown stale.” Dark Thirst and Dark Hunger, the first two books in The Brethren Series of vampire romance are available from Kensington/Zebra Books, while the third installment, Dark Passion, is available from Double Dragon Publishing. The series continues in 2011 with Dark Passages: Tristan & Karen, Dark Passages 2: Pilar & Elías and Dark Vengeance, from Bloodhorse Press, and in a free online graphic novel, Dark Interludes, available at: www.sarareinke.com.
