by J. R. Ward
She slid the screen in place and turned back to the man. Her voice was much clearer with the door open, and Wrath liked the husky sound of it.
"They came at me from across the street. There were two of them. The taller one pulled me into the alley and…"
Wrath snapped to attention.
"I tried to fight him off. I really did. But he was bigger than me, and then his friend pinned my arms." Her breath hiccupped. "He told me he'd cut out my tongue if I screamed, and I thought he was going to kill me, I really did. Then he ripped open my shirt and pushed up my bra. I came so close to being… But I got free and ran. He had blue eyes, brown hair, and an earring, a square cut diamond, in his left ear. He was wearing a dark blue polo shirt and khaki shorts. I didn't get a good look at his shoes. His friend was blond, short hair, no earrings, dressed in a white T-shirt that had the name of that local band, Tomato Eater, on it."
The man got up and went to her. He put his arm around her and tried to hug her against his chest, but she pulled away and put distance between them.
"Do you really think you'll be able to get him?" she said.
The man nodded. "Yeah. I do."
Butch left Beth Randall's apartment in a foul mood.
Seeing a woman who'd been clocked in the face was not a part of his job he liked. And in Beth's case he found it particularly disturbing, because he'd known her for a while and he was kind of attracted to her. The fact that she was an unusually beautiful woman didn't make it any more egregious. But her swollen lip and the bruises around her throat were glaring defects within the otherwise perfection of her features.
Beth Randall was flat-out, hands-down gorgeous. She had long, thick black hair, impossibly bright blue eyes, skin like pale cream, a mouth just made for a man's kiss. And she was built. Long legs, small waist, perfectly proportioned breasts.
The men at the station were all in love with her, and Butch had to give her props: She never used her attractiveness to get inside information from the boys. And she kept everything professional. She never dated any of them, even though most would have given their left nut just to hold her hand.
One thing was for sure: Her attacker had made a hell of a mistake when he'd picked her. The entire police force was going to be gunning for that fool when they found out who he was.
And Butch had a big mouth.
He got into his unmarked car and drove to the St. Francis Hospital complex across town. He parked at the curb in front of the emergency room and went inside.
The guard at the revolving door smiled at him. "You heading for the morgue, Detective?"
"Naw. Just visiting a friend."
The man nodded him through.
Butch walked past the ER's waiting room with its plastic plants, dog-eared magazines, and anxious people. Pushing open a set of double doors, he headed into the sterile, white, clinical environment. He nodded to the nurses and docs he knew as he went to the triage desk.
"Hey, Doug, you know that guy we brought in with the busted nose?"
The attending looked up from a chart he was reading. "Yeah, he's about to be released. He's in the back, room twenty-eight." The internist let out a little laugh. "I tell ya, that nose of his was the least of his problems. He's not going to be singing low notes for a while."
"Thanks, buddy. By the way, how's the wife?"
"Good. She's due in a week."
"Let me know how it goes."
Butch headed for the back. Before walking into room twenty-eight, he looked up and down the hall. It was quiet. There were no medical personnel around, no visitors, no patients.
He opened the door and put his head inside.
Billy Riddle looked up from the bed. There was a white bandage running under his nose like the thing was holding his brains in. "What's up, Officer? You find the guy who got me? I'm about to be released and I'd feel better knowing you had him in custody."
Butch shut the door and quietly flipped its lock.
He was smiling as he crossed the room eyeing the square cut sparkler in the guy's left lobe. "How's the nose, Billy boy?"
"Good. And the nurse was a piece of ass—"
Butch grabbed the front of the punk's blue polo shirt and yanked him to his feet. Then he slammed Beth's attacker against the wall so hard the machinery behind the bed wobbled.
Butch put his face so close they could have kissed. "Did you have fun tonight?"
Wide blue eyes met his. "What are you talking—"
Butch slammed him again. "I've got a positive ID on you. From the woman who you tried to rape."
"That wasn't me!"
"The hell it wasn't. And given your little threat about her tongue and your knife, I might even have enough to send you to Dannemora. You ever have a boyfriend before, Billy? I bet you're going to be popular. Nice white boy like you."
The guy went pale as the walls. "I didn't touch her!"
"Tell you what, Billy. If you're honest with me, and if you tell me where your buddy is, you might actually walk out of here. Otherwise I'm going to take you down to the station on a stretcher."
Billy seemed to consider the deal for a moment. And then the words came out of his mouth fast. "She wanted it! She was begging me—"
Butch brought up his knee and pressed it into Billy's crotch. A high-pitched yelp cut through the air. "Is that why you're going to have to piss sitting down for the next week?"
As the punk started babbling, Butch dropped him and watched him slide down onto the floor. When Billy saw the handcuffs come out, the whining got louder.
Butch flipped him over roughly and was none too gentle as he pulled the guy's wrists together. He clipped the cuffs in place. "You're under arrest. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney—"
"Do you have any idea who my father is!" Billy yelled, as if he'd gotten a second wind. "He's going to have your badge!"
"If you can't afford one, one will be provided for you. Do you understand these rights as I've stated them?"
"Fuck you!"
Butch palmed the back of the guy's head and pressed that busted nose into the linoleum. "Do you understand these rights as I've stated them?"
Billy moaned and nodded, leaving a smear of fresh blood on the floor.
"Good. Now let's get your paperwork done. I'd hate not to follow proper police procedure."
* * *
Chapter Six
"Boo! Would you cut that out?" Beth punched her pillow and rolled over so she faced the cat.
He looked at her and meowed. In the glow from the kitchen light she'd left on, she saw him paw at the glass door.
"Not likely, Boo-man. You're a house cat. House. Cat. Trust me, the big outdoors isn't as grand as it seems."
She closed her eyes, and when the next plaintive meow came, she cursed and threw off her sheet. She went to the door and stared outside.
That was when she saw the man. He was standing against the back wall of the courtyard, a dark shape much larger than the other, familiar shadows cast by the trash bins and the moss-covered picnic table.
With shaking hands she checked the lock on the door and then went to her windows. Both were locked as well. She pulled the shades down, grabbed her portable phone, and went back to stand over Boo.
The man had moved.
Shit!
He was coming toward her. She checked the lock on the door again and backed away, catching the edge of the futon with her foot. As she tumbled into space, the phone fell out of her hand and bounced away. She hit the mattress hard, head bobbing on her neck from the impact.
Impossibly, the door slid open as if the lock had never been turned, as if she'd never clicked it into place.
Still flat on her back, she pumped her legs wildly, knotting the sheets as she pushed her body away from him. He was tremendous, his shoulders wide as beams, his legs as thick as her torso. She couldn't see his face, but the menace coming off him was like a gun aimed at her chest.
She
whimpered as she rolled over on to the floor and crawled away from him, her knees and palms squeaking against the hardwood. His footsteps behind her landed like thunder, getting louder. Cowering like an animal, blinded by fear, she knocked into her hall table and felt no pain at all.
Tears streamed down her cheeks as she begged for mercy and reached for the front door—
Beth woke up, mouth open, a terrible noise shattering the dawn's silence.
It was her. She was screaming at the top of her lungs.
She clamped her lips together, and sure enough her ears stopped hurting. Shuffling out of bed, she went to the sliding door and greeted the sun's first rays with a relief so sweet she got light-headed. As her heart slowed, she took a deep breath and checked the door.
The lock was in place. The courtyard was empty. Everything was normal.
She laughed tightly. Of course she'd have a bad dream after what had happened last night. She was probably going to have the heebie-jeebies for a while.
She turned and headed for the shower. She felt half-dead, but the last place she wanted to be was alone in her apartment. She craved the bustle of the newsroom, wanted to be around all of its people, and phones, and papers. She'd feel safer there.
She was about to step into the bathroom when a lick of pain shot through her foot. She cocked her knee and picked a piece of pottery out of the tough skin of her heel. Bending down, she found the bowl she kept on the hall table in pieces on the floor.
Frowning, she cleaned up the mess.
She must have knocked the thing off when she'd first come home after the attack.
As Wrath walked down into the earth under Darius's mansion, exhaustion followed. He closed and locked the door behind him, disarmed, and drew out a battered trunk from the closet. Flipping the lid back, he grunted as he lifted up a slab of black marble. It was four feet square and four inches thick, and he put it down in the middle of the room. He went back to the trunk, picked up a velvet bag, and tossed it on the bed.
Stripping down, he showered and shaved, then walked back into the room naked. He grabbed the bag, untied the satin ribbon at its neck, and poured out the rough-cut, pebble-sized diamonds onto the slab. The empty satchel fell from his hand and floated down to the floor.
Wrath bowed his head and spoke the words of his mother tongue, the syllables rising and falling with his breath as he paid tribute to his dead. When he finished speaking, he knelt down onto the slab, feeling the stones cut into his flesh. He settled his weight back on his heels, placed his palms on his thighs, and closed his eyes.
The death ritual required him to pass the day without moving, to bear the pain, to bleed in memory of his friend.
In his mind he saw Darius's daughter.
He shouldn't have gone inside of her home like that. He'd scared her half to death, when all he'd wanted to do was introduce himself and explain why she was going to need him soon. He'd also planned to tell her he was going after that human male who'd fucked with her.
Yeah, he'd handled it beautifully. Smooth as gravel.
The moment he'd come inside, she'd bolted in terror and he'd had to strip her memories and put her in a light trance to calm her down. After he'd laid her out on her bed, he'd meant to leave right away, but he hadn't been able to. He'd stood over her, measuring the blurry contrast between her black hair and her white pillowcase, breathing in her scent.
Feeling a sexual stirring in his gut.
Before he'd left, he'd made sure her doors and windows were locked. And then he'd looked back at her one more time. He'd thought of her father.
Wrath focused on the ache that was already setting up shop in his thighs.
As his blood turned the marble red. he saw his dead warrior's face and felt the tie they'd shared in life.
He had to honor his brother's last request. He owed the male at least that for all the years they'd served the race together.
Half-human or not, Darius's daughter was never going to walk the night unprotected again. And she wasn't going to go through her transition alone.
God help her.
Butch finished processing Billy Riddle around six A.M. The guy was offended by the class of drug dealers and thugs he'd been put into the holding cell with, so Butch was careful to make as many typographical errors as possible on his reports. And what would you know, Central Processing kept getting confused about exactly which forms needed to be filled out.
And then the printers had gone on the fritz. All twenty-three of them.
Still, Riddle wasn't long for the station house. His father was indeed a powerful man, a U.S. senator. So some fancy lawyer was going to get Billy sprung quicker than shit through a goose. Probably in the next hour.
'Cause that was the criminal justice system for you. Money talked, and creeps walked.
Not that Butch was bitter or anything.
As he walked out to the lobby, he ran into one of their regular overnight guests. Cherry Pie had evidently just been released from the women's side. Her real name was Mary Mulcahy, and from what Butch had heard, she'd been working the streets for about two years.
"Hey, there, Detective," she purred. Her red lipstick had pooled into the corners of her mouth, and her black eyeliner was smudged. She would have been pretty, he thought, if she put the crack pipe down and slept for about a month straight. "You going home alone?"
"As always." He held the door open for her as they went outside.
"Don't your left hand get tired after a while?"
Butch laughed as they both paused and looked up at the sky.
"So how you been, Cherry?"
"I'm always good."
She put a cigarette between her teeth and lit it while eyeing him.
"You know, your palms ever get too hairy, you could call me. I'd do you for free, 'cause you sure are a handsome SOB. But don't tell Big Daddy I said so."
She blew out a cloud of smoke and absently fingered her ragged left ear. The top half was missing.
Man, that pimp of hers was a rabid dog.
They started down the concrete steps.
"You check out that program I told you about?" Butch asked as they reached the sidewalk. He was helping a friend start up a prostitute support group that would encourage women to get free of the pimps and out of the life.
"Oh, yeah, sure. Good stuff." She flashed him a smile. "I'll see you later."
"Take care of yourself."
She turned away and slapped her right butt cheek with her palm. "Just think, this could be yours."
Butch watched her sashay down the street for a little while. And then he got into an unmarked car and, on impulse, drove across town, back to the Screamer's neighborhood. He pulled up in front of McGrider's. About fifteen minutes later a woman in a tight pair of blue jeans and a black belly shirt came out of the joint. She blinked myopically at the brightening light.
When she caught sight of his car, she fluffed her auburn hair and walked over to him. He put the window down and she leaned in, kissing him on the lips.
"I haven't seen you for a while. You lonely, Butch?" she said against his mouth.
She smelled like dried beer and maraschino cherries, every bartender's perfume at the end of a long night.
"Get in," he said.
She went around the front of the car and slid beside him. They talked about how her night had been as he drove out to the river. She was disappointed that the tips had been light again. And her feet were killing her from running back and forth behind the bar.
He parked under the span bridge that crossed the Hudson River and linked Caldwell's two halves. He made sure they were far enough away from the homeless men lying in beds of rags. There was no reason to have an audience.
And he had to give Abby credit: She was fast. She had his pants undone and was working his erection with a good stroke before he even had the engine off. As he pushed the seat back, she straddled him and nuzzled his neck. He looked past her kinky, permed hair and out to the water.
The
sunlight was so beautiful, he thought, as it dappled over the surface of the river.
"Do you love me, baby?" she whispered in his ear.
"Yeah, sure." He smoothed her hair back and looked into her eyes. They were vacant. He could have been any man, and that was why their relationship worked.
His heart was as empty as her stare.
* * *
Chapter Seven
As Mr. X crossed the parking lot and headed for the Caldwell Martial Arts Academy, he caught a whiff of the Dunkin' Donuts across the street. That smell, that gorgeous, thick smell of flour and sugar and hot oil, was heavy in the morning air. He looked over his shoulder, watching as a man emerged with two white-and-pink boxes under his arm and a huge travel mug of coffee in his other hand.
That would be a nice way to start the morning, Mr. X thought.
Mr. X stepped up onto the sidewalk that ran beneath the academy's red-and-gold awning. He paused, reaching down and picking up a stray plastic cup. Its previous owner had been careful to keep an inch of soda in the bottom so his or her cigarette butts could enjoy floating around while they waited for someone else to throw them away. He pitched the nasty swill in the trash and unlocked the doors to the academy.
The Lessening Society had turned a corner in the war last night, and he was the one who had done the deed. Darius had been a powerhouse of a vampire, a member of the Black Dagger Brotherhood. One hell of a trophy.
It was a damn shame there was nothing left of the corpse to mount on a wall, but Mr. X's bomb had performed adequately and then some. He'd been at home, listening to his police scanner, when the report had come in. The op was everything he had planned it to be, perfectly executed, perfectly anonymous.
Perfectly deadly.
He tried to recall the last time a member of the brotherhood had been taken out. Well before he'd joined the society decades ago, certainly. And he'd expected to get a few pats on the back, not that such accolades motivated him. He'd figured he might even get a bonus out of it, maybe an expansion of his sphere of influence, maybe a greater geographic radius in which to work.
