Wrath

by Lana Pecherczyk

  Wrath…

  The sin wriggled in his gut and picked at the edges. Just like always, the string pulled its puppet, commanding his attention. That way. End the sin. Kill it now. Too many sources. One, two… he counted silently. At least five more people he could tell hiding in the shadows beyond. But who?

  Preferring the safety of distance, Wyatt disconnected the throwing knives attached to his thighs. He palmed the hilts as he crept closer, keeping his movements stealthy and light. Toe first, heel second. Softly, softly, until the sounds of groaning and dying men wafted into earshot. The smell of blood filtered through his mask. If Mary and Sloan were dead, they went down fighting. His throat tightened. Keep going.

  Don’t jump to conclusions. Seek them out.

  Both Mary and Sloan had a unique sin signature. He’d spent his entire life learning how their anger felt, and if he concentrated, he could work out whether the signatures he sensed belonged to them, or the enemy. He tracked around the room—focusing on where he’d felt them before.

  Movement in his periphery.

  He rapid-fire released his daggers, satisfied when they ended with a thud and gurgle of astonishment. Got ‘em. Two wrath signatures winked out, and then… Sloan.

  He felt her. Alive and simmering in anger—probably injured, but alive—thank Christ. But where was Mary? She was usually the most fearful in battle. An assassin that assassins feared. Even as human as she was, she was a force to be reckoned with. The dead bodies attested to that. Uncertainty spread within him. Why couldn’t he sense his mother?

  She was either controlling her rage, or…

  A loud clang, and then light flooded the room revealing piles of dead bodies fallen in disregard over fallen furniture and broken glass. A gasp behind him sent shock-waves rushing through his system. He spun around—

  “What are you doing here?” he growled through his teeth.

  Misha stood arm in arm with Alek by a fuse box on the wall. She’d turned on the lights.

  “I’m sorry!” she gasped, white faced as her gaze traveled over the carnage. “It was so quiet. I thought it was safe.”

  He bit down. “Get back until I say it’s safe.”

  He waved them away and signed the same thing. It was Alek who tugged the stupefied Misha into the safe cover of the hallway. Good boy. He’d make a good soldier if they could work around the hearing and sound disability. When Wyatt turned back, his gaze traveled over the many bodies—some with arrows sticking out of them—to the main stage where two stood still, waiting.

  His heart dropped into his stomach. Falcon had her bullwhip wrapped around Mary’s neck, and the rest of it was looped around the rafters before landing back in her hand. She tightened her hold and stared down at Wyatt from an unmasked face. It must have fallen in battle. Mary was also without her mask, jaw set with determination, eyes hard but thinking. The cord around Mary’s neck reminded Wyatt of the snake consuming Dimitri. Relentless, determined, and unyielding.

  Why wasn’t Mary fighting back?

  The suspicion shouted at him. It was wrong. This scene was wrong. Mary’s hard expression was almost impassive. Apart from her thumbs beneath the cord at her neck, she seemed not to notice, nor care about the stool holding her feet up, or the whip connected to her neck and the ceiling, preparing her for death.

  A groan came from Wyatt’s right, and he caught movement under a fallen table. Deep beneath a pile of red splattered bodies, a hand burst out, followed by Sloan’s sleeve, then her shoulder and head as she pushed the dead weight from herself. Blood streaked down her face like macabre war paint. She groaned loudly.

  With one cautious eye on the stage, Wyatt offered Sloan his hand, and he pulled her to her feet.

  He tugged his mask down. “You good?”

  She nodded curtly. “I’ll heal.”

  “Arrows?”

  “Gone.”

  Shit.

  “Guns?”

  “Nada. And before you ask, it’s all gone. I’m out. You took your sweet-ass time.”

  “Sorry.”

  Her grim face hardened, and she nodded in the direction of the stage. “Do you think she realizes that won’t work on Mary?”

  Hanging Mary, probably not. All of them had spent time training their iron necks with the Shaolin Monks. It was well known in martial arts that to control your opponent was to control their head—whether that be mental or physical. So they spent hours, days, sometimes over weeks hanging from a tree by their necks. And then hours and days slamming iron plates against their foreheads, or to carry loads on their heads to strengthen muscles, turning their most vulnerable body part into an unexpected weapon.

  But had Mary kept up her strength training?

  From the look of calm on her face, he guessed yes, but he couldn’t risk it. A fifty-something-year old woman’s neck wasn’t the same as it was in her youth—strength training or not. He had no idea what was rushing through Mary’s mind—she felt no wrath in that moment. The turmoil of emotion bubbling in her eyes was not connected to anger.

  But it was connected to sloth because Sloan flinched and whispered to Wyatt, “Mary’s guilty about neglecting something.”

  Their stony gazes met and then Sloan gave Falcon a pointed look.

  He exhaled in a rush. It could only mean one thing. When his eyes landed back on Falcon, he stepped closer and asked, “What do you want?”

  The white-haired woman coiled the end of her whip around her fist, tested the torque on the hangman’s noose. As the whip lifted, so did Mary’s neck until she stood on tiptoes, hands straining at the cord for support. Her feet scuffled on the stool, precariously rocking with her slipping foothold.

  Wyatt snarled and lurched forward, but Mary shot him a halting look. “Don’t,” she rasped.

  He stopped, four feet from the stage, shocked. “Why?”

  “Despair,” was all Mary managed to hiss out.

  Sloan hissed in shock, but Wyatt wasn’t surprised. He’d suspected it before. Despair. The forgotten sin… back from the dead. If she—Despair, Falcon, or whatever they should call her now—gave any indication that she heard Mary, or cared, it was lost. The woman just stared down at Wyatt with cold eyes.

  “Give me your blood, and I’ll let her go.”

  “Despair?” Sloan asked. “As in… the sister we thought was dead?”

  Wyatt took another step closer and narrowed his focus on the woman. She certainly looked related with her wide lips and delicate facial structure. Put her next to Sloan, and she’d be the light version next to Sloan’s dark. Tall, like all of them. Strong. Another step closer and he noticed the burn marks down the side of her face, so pale and silvery in the light that he almost didn’t register. They believed Despair died in a fire, and he knew as well as anyone, that although the Lazarus children could heal and regenerate, the scars remained.

  “We thought you were dead,” Wyatt announced gruffly, and then took a step. “We had a funeral for you. We gave you a name.”

  Almost there. The stage was within reaching distance.

  “Stop.” She wrenched on her whip, lifting Mary higher. “Last warning.”

  “Okay, okay!” He held out his palms, crouching as though testing a tiger. “I’m stopping. What do you need my blood for? You already have Griffin’s and Evan’s.”

  “You mean Greed and Envy.”

  “No. That’s the names they gave us, but we chose our own names. I’m Wyatt.” He touched his chest with his palm. “We named you Daisy, because you loved flowers.”

  “My name is Despair.”

  He narrowed his eyes. Interesting. Not Falcon, but Despair. She wasn’t trying to hide it. Good. He was getting in her head. Keep going.

  “He can’t give you what you want,” Sloan added. “He can’t bleed. But I can give you my blood.”

  “You lie. He’s bleeding in the mouth.”

  Christ the woman had sharp eyes to see inside his red mouth.

  “Daisy,” he said. “Let’s talk about th
is.”

  The second her name came out of his mouth, it felt right. Daisy. Not Despair. But she had other thoughts.

  Her face twisted with the most emotion he’d ever seen out of her and a desperation flickered over her features. “Despair. My name is Despair, and we don’t want anyone else’s blood but yours.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t have time for explanations. Give me your blood, bite your tongue if you need to. Do it, or she dies. Five—”

  “That’s Mary, don’t you remember her?” Wyatt said. “She cared for you in that lab.”

  “Four—” Despair’s haunted eyes landed on Mary. “Three.”

  “Don’t,” Wyatt shouted. “I’ll give it to you.” Tugging his gloves off, he bit his tongue. He clenched through the eye-watering pain and let the metallic taste of his blood flow enough so he could spit into his palm. Holding his red hand out, he stepped up to the stage. “Your turn. Spit and shake. I want your word you’ll let her go.”

  She looked down at him. Not even a flicker of emotion remained behind her eyes when she said, “I’m not spitting. I need an uncontaminated sample.”

  “It’s the only way you get what you want. Deal or no deal.”

  Wyatt thought she wouldn’t go for it, but she caved. She secured her end of the bullwhip to a stripper pole. Confident her noose would hold, she spat onto her palm, stretched toward him and shook his hand. While they were still locked, she kicked out, pushed Mary off the stool and into the air, legs flailing and kicking. Mary choked and grasped, long black braid swinging behind her. Wyatt launched forward, vaulted the stage and lifted Mary by the hips, growing the slack on the noose.

  “I got you,” he said to Mary, then bellowed: “Knife!”

  “Where?” Sloan frantically searched the fallen Faithful and mobsters. “I don’t see one.”

  “There—” Wyatt pointed to where he’d felled one of them near a leather couch full of holes. “In his back.”

  Mary’s jaw set in determination, and her face reddened with strain as she tried to say something, but her lips moved. Nothing came out.

  Sloan rushed to retrieve the knife, tugged it from a man’s back, twisted, aimed, and fired at the leather whip holding Mary. With precision accuracy, it sliced through the cord, snapping the tension. Mary dropped into Wyatt’s arms. Frantically, Wyatt worked to release the whip around her neck. Her lips moved, but still no sound came out.

  “Stop trying to speak,” Wyatt said. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

  Defiantly, Mary wouldn’t listen, so Wyatt looked for Misha and called. With her brother by her side, they rushed over.

  “What’s she saying?” Wyatt asked, then said softly to Mary. “She can read lips. Don’t speak, just mouth the words.”

  Misha watched, then said, “Find Daisy. Family first.”

  Fuck.

  Wyatt snapped to attention and signaled for Sloan to take one direction while he searched the other. They went through the destroyed club, into the dressing rooms, around the bars, the storerooms, and down the stairwells, but Despair was long gone. All that was left of her was the saliva drying on his palm.

  Forty-One

  Exhaustion battered Misha’s defenses as she said goodnight to her younger brother and settled him into the spare room in Wyatt’s apartment. He’d insisted both of them stay there while he sorted out affairs with his family, and she was glad for it. Being away from him was not something she looked forward to, especially after the night they’d had.

  The sight of the snake crushing Dimitri’s body had burned into her memory and every time she closed her eyes, it was all she could see. Green monstrous muscle, slithering and choking.

  When they’d arrived earlier, she’d washed and changed into fresh clothes, and Alek had done the same. Wyatt had been gone for hours in the basement, seeing to his mother’s injuries and conferring with the rest of the Deadly Seven, who had returned in dribs and drabs from their rescue missions. Grace had stopped in for a few minutes to check on Alek’s wounds before she had to leave to work at the hospital. She had told Misha there were many fatalities that night. Many people had died, but many were saved.

  After Grace left, Misha wanted to spend time getting Alek used to the unfamiliar surroundings, but as it turned out, Alek didn’t need her much at all. He helped himself to food in the fridge and made Misha a hot chocolate before heading off to bed. He hadn’t mentioned Dimitri and his revelation about being their long-lost half-brother, which meant—hopefully—that he hadn’t heard or seen an iota of that confession.

  It didn’t matter now if what Dimitri said was true. He was dead. It would only hurt and confuse her family’s opinion of their mother. Misha could only comment on what kind of person Hannah Minksi was to her, and that woman, the one who shelled beans with them in the backyard, the one who stayed up for hours sewing Roksana’s ballerina costumes, that was the only woman she needed to know about.

  After Misha finished her hot chocolate, and while she could still keep her eyes open, she went to check on her brother, her maternal instinct needing to see him safe and in bed. When she cracked the door to his room, she found his long lanky frame sprawled on his back under the covers of the double bed. God, he wasn’t a kid anymore.

  Emotion circled her heart and squeezed, spreading warmth throughout her body. She couldn’t help but perch at the end of the bed to place her palm on Alek’s chest. Feeling his breath was the most incredible thing. She remembered him as a child and having to communicate by touch to educate him.

  Alek’s eyes blinked open, saw it was her, gave her hand a half-hearted pat of solidarity, and then drifted back to sleep. He was so brave. She’d spent too much time thinking bitterly about parenting, instead of focusing on the amazing humans her siblings had become. She’d never stopped to think that regardless of her regret toward the loss of her prime partying days, she’d helped Alek grow into a strong, capable man, despite his disability. She’d also helped Roksana become one of the best ballerinas in the Tri-state area. Misha had done good. Her mother would be proud.

  Misha covered Alek with the comforter and returned to the living area. She gathered a throw blanket and waited on the pillowy brocade sofa. Her eyes had only been closed a minute when she felt herself being carried in strong arms. Rousing from the haze of sleep, she found Wyatt placing her on his enormous bed.

  “You’re back,” she murmured into the dark.

  He shushed her and told her to go back to sleep, but suddenly, she wasn’t tired. The smell of him lingered, and she became acutely aware of freshly showered man. Sitting up, she blinked at his silhouette, trying to let her eyes adjust, and when they had—her savage koteczek wore only a pair of low slung sweats, naked torso right there for her to see. The sight made every feminine muscle inside her clench in delight.

  The two of them locked eyes for an eternity.

  Desire thrummed in her veins as she soaked him up. Still hot, she thought. And she was still filled with want for the heroic man. Not bored after one night. Not at all. Everything about him screamed masculinity, from the dark fuzz trailing down his abdomen to the waistband of his sweatpants, to the bulge in his pants growing under the loving weight of her intense gaze. Every muscle in his carved body turned to stone.

  “Come here,” she breathed, but he wouldn’t budge.

  She needed to feel his strength around her body, to be caged in his arms. She reached out, and it was that silent gesture, not words, that had him coming to her side. The mattress dipped as he lowered. Curling a knee as he sat, he left the other dangling over the edge. Still not fully committing, he held back. He sat there and toyed with her hair. So serious and stern, as if he didn’t want to break her… or scare her away.

  The revelation zipped through her. This was her fault. She shouldn’t have left him. Trust was a two-way street, and she had to work out any problems with him together. She owed him that respect. As his warm touch feathered behind her earlobes, she melted and leaned into him.


  “Is Mary okay?” she whispered to fill the silence.

  He nodded.

  “Are you okay?”

  He exhaled in a long slow burst and then adjusted her hair on the other side. Unable to stop, he trailed his touch everywhere. With his two big hands heating her blood, she felt completely at home. He once said that her touch was like a balm to him, like someone injecting valium into his veins, and from the way he visibly relaxed, she believed him. It was such a strong, visceral reaction that it was hard not to see she was made for him. One in millions. It made her feel empowered. Bold. Her internal sensations would never be the same as his, not a lab-created biological response, but she still felt it—the connection that drilled into her soul and basked in the heat of his sun.

  Her hands slid up his chest and traced every feverish dip and valley of his satiny skin. Along his collarbone, up the thick column of his neck, around his earlobes, over his stubbly jaw, into his thick hair still damp from the shower. He’d saved her life today. He’d saved her brother. He would keep saving people because that was the kind of man he was, even if he hated himself sometimes.

  Maybe she could love him enough for two people. Or three.

  She continued to rub and massage, easing his anxiety, but he still held a note of restraint. He wanted to talk about the possible pregnancy, but she couldn’t do it. It reminded her too much of her mother dying. She’d had enough adulting for one night. Tomorrow.

  With a pained look, he opened his mouth to speak, but she shook her head, silencing him. She just needed to be close to him. To find that joy he spoke of and remind herself it would be okay.

  To banish the nightmarish snake scenes still flashing behind her eyes, she kissed the corner of his mouth. He stiffened. She kissed again. His lashes lowered and he shuddered. She kissed again, closer to the center of his bottom lip. Her tongue darted out and tasted salty skin, licking and laving until he opened his mouth and she bit down on the plump flesh.

  A hitch of breath and his restraint burst. He kissed back, tongue meeting hers in a demanding dance that made her mind spin. He cupped her head and held them locked together, unyielding in his ardor, until they dropped to the bed, breathless. Lying next to each other, feeling hot breaths between them, he rolled her so her back was flush against the front of his body. Deftly, he adjusted the comforter and sheets so they were both cocooned beneath. With a sigh, he rested his head on the pillow behind her and tugged her close as if he thought she’d slip away.