The Community Series, Books 1-3

by Tappan, Tracy

  A long, slow breath eased from Dev’s chest. Yes, Toni!

  Roth’s black brows slashed together, his mouth pinching.

  Toni looked at her husband across the U, probably wanting some support. As much as it was the general consensus that Toni was the true muscle behind Ţărână’s leadership, she didn’t like to bully Roth into her way. “Can you give us a risk assessment, Jacken?”

  On a good day, Jacken had the hardest jaw Dev had ever seen; right now it was cement-like with impatience over all of this waste-of-precious-time back-and-forthing. “What do you want me to tell you?” he snapped. “The pucker factor on this mission’s going to be damned high, but, as you just said, does it really fucking matter?”

  Toni’s eyelashes flickered down, the covert glance she cast Jacken from beneath them was something along the lines of, Gee, thanks, Rude Dude. You made everything so much better.

  “This mission is do-able.” Jacken laid a forearm on the conference table, showcasing the long, interlocking teeth tattoos that were the exclusive markings of anyone with a genetic link to the dark Om Rău leader, Lorke. “I wouldn’t have put Nichita in charge if I wasn’t sure he could handle it.”

  The back of Dev’s neck heated. Well…shit…he hadn’t expected to hear that. He’d sort of figured he’d earned this position by default, seeing as Arc Costache—a senior warrior just as worthy of the position—hadn’t wanted to go on topside missions anymore now that his wife was five months pregnant.

  “And who will Mr. Nichita be leading?” Roth asked brusquely.

  Toni turned her blue eyes toward Dev.

  “Thomal Costache, Gábor Pavenic, and Sedge Stănescu,” he answered.

  “Only four men in total?” Roth raked his stare back over to Toni. “You’re actually supporting this?”

  “It’s what the warriors train for, Roth.” Toni’s voice was quiet and soothing, almost nurturing. No bullying here, but—Dev’s heart leapt—she would get her way. “I trust in their abilities.” She looked at her husband again. “This is ultimately a decision for the head of security, though. It’s your men who’ll be in danger, Jacken.”

  Oh, sweet. She’d just handed Dev a lock. If he wouldn’t have ended up flat as a Frisbee for it, he’d have run over and given her a big smooch.

  Jacken scraped to his feet and leveled his eyes at Dev. “Put your team in the field.”

  “Yes, sir.” Catching back a huge grin, Dev about-faced and left the Council’s conference room.

  Chapter Three

  Present: Topside, 3:23 a.m.

  Marissa hit the warehouse floor hard, taking the brunt of the fall on her shoulder, her chin whacking the floor. The astringent smell of urine stung her nose.

  “Videon!” Murk thundered at Joshua Tree across the room. “Bloody fuck are you doing?!”

  Videon stopped pumping his hips and stepped back, his hard member sliding out of his victim. He carelessly hiked up his pants, making a half-hearted attempt to cram his sex away, then pulled a ring out of his pocket and slipped it on his finger.

  Marissa had noticed the same ring on her kidnappers, Murk and Teer—noticed, because the rings were weird-looking, the crystal in the middle like boiling red borscht soup. The new, foul-smelling arrivals didn’t have them; they must be members of a different sadistic fraternity.

  Videon sauntered across the room, the V of his gaping pants leaving bare a black briar patch of pubic hair, the outline of his still half-erect penis visible near the zipper. His rape victim scrambled off the table and staggered to the other woman by the wall, falling into her arms.

  Marissa humped herself a few inches across the floor, her instincts blaring for her to get as far away from that man as possible. The emptiness in his black eyes and the scar snagging his upper lip into a permanent sneer emitted a tangible evil.

  Videon strode to the table in the middle of the warehouse and picked up a near-empty pack of Pall Malls, jiggling it. A cigarette slid out onto the table. He clamped it between his lips, gazing at the men across from him. “What?” he asked with such insolent nonchalance that the red-haired man snarled and sprang at him.

  Murk jumped forward and grabbed Red by the shirt. “Give over, Tollar!” Cords bulged in Murk’s neck and tendons pushed up along the tops of his hands. He was clearly putting a great deal of strength into stopping Red, yet he barely managed it—and he was the Hulk.

  Tollar wrenched out of Murk’s hold and rounded on him, his eyes flashing with such rage they looked lit up with red lights. “We ain’t taking that bitch, you hear me? She don’t count toward the ten you owe us, not when that cock-bite marked her.”

  “Keep your hair on,” Murk snapped.

  “You can still impregnate her, grotbag.” Videon lit his cigarette and dragged on it. “I just gave her the back scuttle is all.”

  Marissa wriggled a couple more inches from the arguing men, blackness edging around the sides of her vision. Their conversation was a scramble of alphabet soup in her head.

  Tollar went silent, indecision tightening his expression.

  Murk planted his hands on his hips. “So, do you want her or not?”

  Tollar’s eyes slowly narrowed on Videon. “Maybe I should fuck you up the ass, eh, little twat? Teach you a lesson about touching what ain’t yours.”

  Videon smiled around the smoking length of his cigarette. “Oh, you’re givin’ me the screamin’ abdabs, mate.”

  Murk rumbled a noise in his chest. “Will the lot of you quit chattin’ shit?”

  Tollar turned on Murk, his lip curled. “You said there were four.”

  Murk bolted his eyes back over to Videon. “Where the bloody hell are Dace and Hutch with their piece?”

  “They haven’t been able to nick her, yet,” Videon said, smoke leaking from his nostrils. “The girl’s at some knees-up inside the Torrey Pines Golf Club, huggins of people about. Dace and Hutch are staked out there, but I doubt they’ll be able to pinch her tonight.”

  “For fuck’s sake,” Murk grumbled, pressing his thumb to the middle of his brow for a moment. “All right. Let’s deal with what we got, and can crack on with this.” He pounded toward Marissa.

  She recoiled and whimpered.

  “Here.” Murk seized her by the back of the ball gag strap and hauled her up, pulling her hair and wrenching her mouth into a horrible stretch of a smile.

  She cried out when he shoved her at Tollar. She hit Red’s concrete body and bounced off, gagging as she reeled backward. God, he smelled like twelve backed-up toilets that’d been putrefying for decades.

  “These three make five women total paid toward our debt. So take ’em,” Murk bit out, “and piss off.”

  Tollar hissed something under his breath, but gestured to his companions. The black-haired men went for the two women huddled against the back wall.

  “C’mon, pretty one,” Tollar said to Marissa. “It’s going to be a big fight for you down in Oţărât.” He suggestively ran his tongue over his lips, flashing a tongue piercing in the process.

  Silent tears coursed down Marissa’s cheeks. Jesus, what did that mean? She couldn’t… There were just too many wrong, conflicting things about this entire situation for her brain to deal with.

  Tollar towed her through the warehouse door, the other two woman weeping and moaning behind her, and headed for the—

  Marissa went rigid and screamed around her ball gag as a horde of bat creatures came flying off the roof, their black wings flapping like canvas sails in the wind. One landed in a hard crunch of gravel right in front of them, booted feet planted wide. No, not a bat, a man in a black trench coat. He whirled in fast-motion, his torso twisting then unwinding as he brought up a fearsome roundhouse punch. It connected with a solid crack against Tollar’s jaw, and the next thing she knew, Red was skidding on his back in the gravel.

  The bat man spun again, a streak of black clothes, coattails fanning out, huge muscles bulging beneath his coat. The heel of Bat Man’s boot crashed against Murk’
s face, whipping Hulk’s head around with near spine-cracking force, while at the same moment, he slashed his arm out in the opposite direction to let fly a glinting knife.

  Marissa heard a swoosh, a bark of pain, and then one of the black-haired neo-Nazis was suddenly on his knees, a hilt sticking out of his upper chest.

  With more of that lethal grace, Bat Man rounded on her. She caught only a fleeting glimpse of his face—black hair and black goatee—before he tossed her onto his shoulder like she weighed no more than a beach towel, and sling-shotted into a run. The ground blurred into one long strip of mud beneath her eyes. The man was fast.

  Another man appeared at their side, easily keeping pace with their flying speed. How were these guys doing that? The newcomer had a stylish blond flattop, the crisscrossed straps of a headset visible through his hair, and one of the other women propped on his shoulder.

  “Coming up fast and tight,” the blond warned. She heard a hollow echo of his voice up near Bat Man’s ears: another headset.

  What kind of men wore headsets?

  Rat-a-tat-tat. Rifle fire lit off behind them. Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat. Nuggets of dirt erupted from the ground around them like popping champagne corks. Rat-a-tat—

  The blond man went down.

  “Thomal!” Bat Man skidded to a stop. “Are you all right?”

  “Shit.” The guy called Thomal grimaced at the woman he’d accidentally dumped from his shoulder.

  The woman struggled to a sitting position, a curtain of hair hanging in her face.

  “God,” Thomal said to her. “Sorry.”

  “Can you run, Costache?” Bat Man asked.

  “Sorry, brother.” Thomal jerked his chin at the bloody chunk torn out of the back of his boot. “That bullet caught my Achilles.”

  A third dark-clothed man barreled up to them, another woman—the rape victim—on his shoulder. His left bicep sported a tattoo of a bull skull that had a cracked fissure down the forehead and long horns curving out of the temples; the whole thing was “attached” to his arm by a ring of thick braided rope. To add to his menace, his black hair was buzzed down to prison-standard stubble. “No time to stand here burping the worm, fuckers.”

  Beyond him, seven armed bad guys were shouting and, yes, coming up fast. More gunfire cut through the night.

  Bat Man ducked. “Crap, we need to haul balls.” Without another word, Bat Man plucked Thomal’s ex-passenger from the ground and swung her up onto his unoccupied shoulder, then hauled Thomal up by the arm. “Grab his other side,” he ordered Bull Tattoo.

  The two men seized Thomal under the armpits and bolted off at a run again.

  Marissa gasped as she teetered precariously on Bat Man’s shoulder. Now that he had only one arm available to hold two passengers—the other occupied with Thomal—she was in serious danger of taking a nosedive off her perch. She strained her head to look at her co-passenger, her body stiff with trying to stay onboard. Their gazes met through their masses of long, whiplashing hair, both of them teary-eyed, both their mouths deformed out of shape by ball gags. And both of them were clearly thinking the same thing: had they just jumped from the frying pan into the fire?

  Who were these guys?

  Footsteps pounded onto the path right behind them, and Bat Man hissed a breath. “Now might be a real good time to bring the van, Sedge.” No sooner had Bat Man spat those words into the mic of his headset, than a windowless Dodge cargo van ripped onto the road in front of them.

  The van squealed in a neat circle, the driver-side door opening even before the van had spun to a complete halt, and a man took what appeared to be no more than a casual step out of the moving vehicle. His wild mane of long blond gave him the look of a romance book cover hero…except for the monstrous rifle he had jacked back against his waist.

  Teeth bared around a rebel yell, Deranged Fabio unloaded his rifle’s clip onto the neo-Nazis, the report from the weapon jerking the huge muscles swelling along his chest and arms.

  Didn’t men come in size regular anymore?

  Behind, men hollered and bodies thumped to the earth. Whether from being shot or diving out of the way, Marissa couldn’t tell.

  Bat Man catapulted into the back of the Dodge with Bull Tattoo right behind him, dumping Thomal toward the front of the vehicle and depositing Marissa and her co-passenger to the side of—

  Teer of the Gangrene Jaw hurled himself at the van, his hand grasping the door frame and one foot already planted inside.

  Marissa and the other two women muffled out screams.

  Eye-blink quick, Bat Man spun in a crouch and swung a short-nosed rifle up from the depths of his trench coat, squeezing off a couple of shots.

  Teer’s collarbone sprayed up liquid, the blood looking eerily white in the dim moonlight. He fumbled to hang on, his body leaning out, then the van shot forward and Teer was flung off the back.

  “You soddin’ dobber!” Teer yelled, stumbling. “I’m goin’ to rip your ricker out through your mush!”

  “Great,” Bat Man drawled. “I’m sure I’d be real scared if I knew what the hell you just said.”

  Marissa blinked as she watched Teer turn and run back to join his companions. Hadn’t the man just been shot?

  The van picked up speed, and Teer’s image rapidly receded.

  Bat Man gave the roadway a quick scan, then turned toward them, wind from the open rear doors lashing strands of dark hair across his eyes. He made a harsh noise in his throat as his attention skimmed over all three of them. “That’s some fucked-up shit there.” He withdrew a long knife from a sheath at his waist. He held it up in front of them in a non-threatening grip, his fingers forming an okay symbol around the hilt. His other hand was raised palm out in the universal sign of peace. “I’m 100% Grade A Good Guy, I promise. I just want to cut your bindings off, if that’s okay.”

  Marissa nodded her head vigorously. God, yes, starting yesterday.

  Leaning forward, Bat Man reached around her back to her bindings, nearly tucking her nose against his throat. She caught the woolly scent of his trench coat and another distinct aroma. Not of cologne, but of man, of grit and masculine power and something…she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Something almost animalistic, but in a good way, sort of like a warm, hay-scented barn full of stallions or a freshly washed, totally nice cougar. He must have also come equipped with his own internal combustion engine, because his body heat was off-the-charts hot.

  She felt a back-and-forth sawing at her wrists, then snap, she was free. She pried the ball gag out of her mouth and hauled in a huge breath.

  Bat Man moved over to cut free her co-passenger; Bull Tattoo was releasing the rape victim.

  “I’m Hadley,” her co-passenger introduced hoarsely, taking Marissa’s hand and squeezing it.

  Marissa squeezed back. “Marissa.”

  Then the three of them rounded on their rescuers, all asking questions at once.

  “My God, what’s going—?”

  “Who are those men?”

  “What do they want with—?”

  “Who are you?”

  “Whoa, whoa. Okay, slow down.” Bat Man re-sheathed his knife. “We’ll get to all your questions, don’t worry. First off, introductions. I’m Dev Nichita, that’s Gábor Pavenic,” he pointed to Bull Tattoo, “he’s Thomal Costache,” he indicated the injured blond, “and the one driving is Sedge Stănescu.”

  Marissa gave Bat Man an incredulous look. Sounded like a Who’s Who from the Kremlin, and… She narrowed her eyes on her other rescuers. Now that she was getting a good look at them, she saw that they were all serious eye candy, ten points above any other number of gorgeous she’d ever seen on a man before. Sedge-Fabio with that mane of blond hair any woman would kill for, Flattop Thomal with a face of Greek quality structure, and, jeez, even disreputable-looking Gábor, with that bull skull tattoo, had a sexy cleft in his chin and a pair of sulky, downturned brown eyes that just oozed bedroom.

  But it was the owner of the muscular sho
ulder she’d ridden on, Dev, who had the type of looks that made her mouth water. He was the rugged and virile type, but also smoldering and a little threatening, although in a titillating way, like a tuxedoed figure she might encounter in the dim hallways of a Transylvanian castle. If she hadn’t been so frazzled, she would’ve taken a moment to let her imagination go wild.

  Hadley cleared her throat. “Maybe the better question would be: what are you? Military? DEA? ATF?”

  “Um, well…” Dev reached outside and hauled one of the rear van doors shut. “That’s complicated and somewhat classified. It’d probably be better if you just think of us as an extra-special security unit.”

  “What, like, ‘Special Special Forces’?” She huffed a breath. “What kind of cockamamie BS is that? Why would some ultra-classified security unit need to be saving me—any of us?” She glanced at the other two women, and they nodded in agreement.

  “All that will be explained to you when we get you to a safe location.” Dev reached for the other van door, and—

  The guttural rumble of a boat engine cut him off as the lowrider Impala turned sharply onto their road and fishtailed up behind them.

  Chapter Four

  134 years ago: August 10th, 1877, Transylvania, Romania. Văcărescu Estate in Târgovişte

  A vicious backhand came out of nowhere, striking Pettrila Rázóczi on the side of her jaw with enough force to send her spinning to the floor. Pain streaked a lightning flash through her face as she braced her hands on the Kula rug, her eyes dizzily tracing the red and beige pattern. Catching her breath and gathering her wits, she twisted her head to glare up through the tumble of her black hair at the man who’d just hit her. Glare up his trunk-like legs, up, up his tall, wide body to that face like hewn rock.