by JL Madore
His knuckles cracked as his fists clenched. Of course, she was. This little tableau rang too perfect for her not to be. Don’t be dead. Not this time. He pressed two fingers to her slender neck and drew a heavy breath. Warm flesh and a strong pulse met his fingertips. “Well, score one for the good guys.”
She was alive, but out. Drugged? That didn’t make sense. They were in a feeding lair. Daemons who fed on human blood, organs, and tissue didn’t sour their kills with drugs. They overpowered them. Brutalized them. Harvested them.
Kyrian laid healing hands on the woman and shook his head. “No serious damage. I’ll fix her up as much as I can but leave her sore to avoid too many questions.”
“I thought you said the female snatched wasn’t human?” Seth said.
“I did. This isn’t her. Help me get her down.” Zander supported the woman’s weight with his one freed hand, while Kyrian and Seth worked on their restraints. Damn, she was a stunner. Long slender legs. Soft round hips. Perfect ass. Her breasts were larger than he would have expected from a woman of her stature, but for once he wouldn’t argue with the heavens.
He cursed. Was he really ogling a victim of daemon violence? Such a bastard.
“Phoenix,” Zander said, shifting his sights and loathing himself more than usual. “Find something to cover her.”
While Phoenix searched, Kyrian and Seth used their blades to make quick work of the wall shackles. The Nephilim weapon was wicked sharp and cut through anything. Always. Before now. The strange handcuffs that bound him to the woman, however, were another story. No matter what his brothers tried, the restraints remained unbroken.
He swept the floor clean with his boot and then eased the woman to the ground to take a closer look. The handcuffs weren’t police issue or the recreational kind he sold at his club. The heavy alloy and tarnished patina said these manacles weren’t from the human world at all.
“They’re spelled somehow.” Seth ran a hand over his dark, brush cut. “You’re good and stuck, my brother.”
Phoenix returned with a ratty blanket and a bungee cord in one hand, and a torn woman’s dress in the other. Both were bloody and neither worthy to touch her flesh.
“Forget that,” Zander said, “help me with my vest. If we turn it inside out, we can use the bungee cord as a belt.”
Seth frowned and shrugged out of his own vest. “Here, use my shirt.” As soon as he tried to dress her, he realized the difficulty. Her cuffed hand was attached to Zander’s and couldn’t go through the armhole. “Okay, yeah, let’s use your vest.”
Zander slid his warrior vest over their joined wrists, flipped it inside out and slipped the woman’s free arm through. Their size difference had the thing hanging to her mid-thigh but that was good. The bungee made a decent belt to hold the sides together, so all her essential parts and pieces were tucked out of eyeshot.
Zander eased the blade of his dagger beneath his belt at the small of his back. Having it sheathed anywhere other than its proper housing begged for trouble, but such was his night.
“I wish we had something better to offer her than a vest.”
Kyrian shrugged. “At least she ended up cuffed to a wall and tortured instead of hacked and stacked like her racemates on the other side of the warehouse.”
Zander glanced around at the aftermath of slaughter. He’d thought the massacre grizzly in the dark, but it was appalling all lit up. Why spare her? How had she ended up a placeholder in his own personal nightmare? He’d never told anyone about Niobe. Not Tanek. Not even Kyrian. The details were far too exact to be a coincidence. Somehow this was a message for him. A warning? A threat? He had no clue.
“Z?” Kyrian asked. “What’s going on with you?”
Zander forced it from his mind. “Just taking it all in.”
He slid down the wall beside the woman and winced when his ass settled on the ground. Wet heat soaked his hip. The stab wound through his oblique should have healed hours ago, but the hole still leaked onto his shirt and jeans. He didn’t understand any of this.
Kyrian knelt before him and pointed to the intricate symbols inscribed in the cuff’s alloy. “It’s a mix of the old languages, classic Hebrew, a few Arabic symbols, and I’d swear that’s Enochian. Danel should take a look.”
Zander didn’t want that Persian asshole anywhere near this human or him for that matter. “Forget him, I’ve got this.” He twisted his wrist and followed the inscriptions, first on his cuff and then on the woman’s. “It says something about death and destruction . . . blah, blah, blah.”
Kyrian arched a dark brow. “Really? Blah, blah? Well good then. I’m relieved it’s nothing serious. How do you suggest we remove them before she wakes up?”
Whether it was blood loss, exhaustion, or brain centrifuge, Zander couldn’t think of a single comeback. He’d forgotten more languages than most people knew ever existed, but Danel was the historian of their dysfunctional faction—gifted with ancient languages, runes, and hieroglyphs.
And he detested humans—as much as he detested Zander.
“It’s the right call,” Kyrian said. The Greek produced two cigarettes and his fancy Van Cleef lighter. “Danel can work his magic before she wakes up and the shit hits.”
Zander accepted the peace offering and inhaled. He didn’t smoke often, but Kyrian’s instinct was bang on. He let the custom-blend of tobacco sooth the night’s rough edges. Brushing his fingers over the cuff’s etched surface again, Zander exhaled. “Fine, call Danel. Tell him, with Tanek out of touch, I’m commander. Tell him I order him to get down here.”
Kyrian snorted. “Yeah, I’ll lead with that.”
Seth eyed him as Kyrian backed away. “You’ve got a serious grenade growing out of your forehead, Sumerian.”
Zander tested the contusion and hissed. To be immortal, but still feel pain and bleed like a sieve sucked ass. Part of this world, but not. Alive, but not.
“What did they beat you with, steel girders?” Seth circled a stack of harvested bodies and pushed the dislodged arm closer to the pile with his boot. “How the hell did a night-crawler knock you cold anyway?”
Zander hadn’t thought it possible, but there it was.
He eyed the twins and wondered if Seth or Phoenix would’ve been taken down in the same situation. The two were massive, even by Nephilim standards. Not bulging ‘roid-droid types, but they both carried skeletons so big, the weight and mass of their muscles stretched out and gave them a bad-ass vibe the ladies panted over. And then the identical twin possibilities kicked in, and the allure of Phoenix being mute cherried their karmic sundae.
Phoenix joined the group and signed that the perimeter remained secure. He untied the black bandana that covered his torn-out voice box and tossed it to Zander. The ragged, scar that encircled Phoenix’s neck never ceased to strike Zander cold. Though his throat was literally ripped out as a child, he couldn’t be killed. Despite the transition to his Nephilim life years later, his new powers couldn’t fix what was no longer there.
Zander cast a wary glance and blew human out of his nose.
Kyrian bowled a daemon head over and Zander stopped it with his boot. Piss-yellow eyes. Vertical slits. How could run-of-the-mill Shedim demons knock him for a loop?
“Good thing you tagged us in before breaching this little funhouse.” Kyrian’s gaze narrowed at him. “You sure you’re okay, my brother? You look weird.”
Zander waved off the TLC. “Where are we on all this?”
Seth stepped out of the walk-in refrigerator spanning the side wall and his shoulders filled the industrial doorway. “Some kind of processing plant—bodies out here, organ jars and innards in there. What I don’t get is how we could miss this much hunting off-quota.”
Zander had no clue. Nephilim didn’t work well together, true. Violent muscleheads were like that, but the eight of them had always been on top of the quotas in their city and suburbs beyond. A harvest this size should’ve set off alarms.
Kyrian checked his pho
ne and frowned. “If Tanek tracked a target into Hell without back-up again I’ll lose my shit.”
“You won’t be the only one.” Seth bent over the closest pile of body parts and continued to inventory the personal effects. “The higher-ups only take so much broken protocol before they fry our balls. They’re probably sautéing the garlic now.”
Zander’s stomach churned. A fine line divided brave and stupid and the men in his garrison blurred that line more often than not. That pissed off the men upstairs—which wasn’t all bad. Can you say Daddy issues?
Though they looked like Ivy League gangsters decked out in white suits, archangels were intolerant bastards with contemptuous personalities. He and his fellow soldiers were immortal, but the archangels sired them and could end their existence with a thought.
If they gave it even that.
Phoenix whistled long and low and Seth jogged off to see what was doing.
Zander dropped his head back against the wall. He wanted to work, hated sitting there while his hands were tied, or cuffed as the case may be. “Kyrian, where the hell is the Persian?”
“I left him a message to get over here.”
“Yeah, and after he stops laughing maybe he’ll grace us with his presence.”
Kyrian smiled. “You wish. He’ll never stop laughing.”
Though Zander loved going head-on with Danel, with Tanek off-grid, he needed to lock things down. He gestured to the other side of the warehouse. “Call him back. I need this woman off my arm before we add exposure to the list. Remind him how the men upstairs feel about exposure. Maybe that will motivate him.”
Zander shifted his numb ass, primed to rip someone’s head off. “Seth, how many bodies are we talking?”
“Hard to tell. It’s a jigsaw of parts and pieces. I’d guess close to sixty—maybe more.”
Kyrian tossed a lit match on the Shedim bodies and the two corpses burst into ash. “How is that possible?”
It chafed Zander raw when the dark dealings of their reality touched the lives of innocents—but sixty? “Call the others. See if they’ve picked up Tanek’s trail. If he’s at O-Zone working off his night with a bottle of my booze, I’m gonna kick his ass.”
Seth nodded. “It’s strange we haven’t heard from him, Z, I get that, but he’s the Nephilim first-born and immortal. How bad can it be?”
Zander scrubbed through his matted hair. Seth was right, but the gnawing in his gut wouldn’t ease. Man, he needed to wash this night off his skin. “If the men upstairs aren’t aware of a mass slaughter on our watch, it’s simply a matter of time. We’re about to have our nuts twisted in a vice, and that’s without killing an innocent human because of exposure.”
Kyrian frowned and studied the woman slumped against Zander’s shoulder. “If we’re lucky, we can wipe her memory and get her back to her life. If she’s been kept on this side of the warehouse, she might be salvageable.”
Burying traumatic memories was tricky in a human’s underused brain without adding visuals like this to her psyche. If she’d soaked in all this Otherworld horror and they tried to wipe her, they’d either leave her a vegetable or need to put her down. The reality was harsh, but one human remained inconsequential next to the exposure of the Otherworld. If she knew what went on here and why . . . she was dead already.
As if his thoughts called her attention, a low feminine moan rose beside him.
“We’re outta time, here boys.” He tried to scoop her off the concrete floor and into his arms. Yeah, not with their bound wrists. On the second try, he slung her over his shoulder. The cuffs were awkward and the hole in his side protested, but he managed. Her weight barely registered, her body so delicate.
He scanned the room and shook his head. No avoiding the mounds of decay. “I’m taking her outside. Sanitize this place and we’ll meet back at the club.”
CHAPTER TWO
Austin lay on her back, the vague thought that she needed to wake, turning over in her head. Her body ached. It hurt to think. It hurt to breathe. She pushed at the fog blanketing her mind. Did she have the flu? Her stomach churned. Maybe. She brushed at her face, a heavy pull against her wrist triggering a sharp, cutting pain.
Oh, sweet Texas. She’d been taken. A wave of disjointed images drummed at her consciousness: Stetson’s growl outside her apartment, hands grabbing her, something foul pressed over her face.
“Don’t be afraid.” The voice came from close beside her and she gasped. “You’re safe. I won’t hurt you.”
She scrambled back and felt the ground beside her. She closed her fist around a stick and swung through the darkness. “Get away from me. Stay back.”
“I’m back,” he said. His clothes rustled as he shifted beside her. “Stop flailing. Your wrist is bleeding.”
The timbre of his voice triggered something weird in her head and she stilled. A bright blue glow briefly silhouetted a massive man in front of her. As his words faded, so too did the strange sight. How? Was she still drugged?
“Who are you?” She focused on the black void before her. “You gonna kill me?”
“My name is Zander Ambrose. I’m here to help.”
She stared, mesmerized as the vision returned. A warm rush spread over her skin. She could see him. Sort of. Wavy hair flowing past shoulders as broad as a barn door, wide palms up between them, arms and thighs bulging with muscle. The man loomed large. The man who’d grabbed her had been big too.
Her stomach lurched again. She still felt hands on her, fingers digging into her arms as she’d fought. They stripped her. She leaned to the side to retch. Nothing came up. She hadn’t eaten since . . . she didn’t know how long.
“You are safe now,” the man said in a softer tone.
She didn’t feel safe—chilled to the bone, sore, scared.
Not safe.
She needed to think. Where was she? Cool, dewy grass prickled her bare arms and legs, the smell of damp lawn and soil in the air. No heat of the summer sun beat down on her. Downtown’s usual hum and hiss remained eerily quiet. Nighttime. Somewhere remote. The day’s humidity hung still, mixed with the slight scent of ozone. A coming storm. She breathed in again, deeper this time. Blood and death. That was the place where she’d been held.
“Are you one of them? Those men who kidnapped me?”
“No, but they’ll be back. We need to go. My truck’s not far.”
She stared at him, mesmerized. If she focused when he spoke, she saw more than just an outline. She could make out the hint of his features. Twelve years. Twelve years since one stupid moment, no different from any other, left her hospitalized and changed forever. One moment’s distraction in the rodeo ring and she’d been told she’d never compete again—never see again.
This wasn’t traditional sight, but it was something.
“We should go,” he said.
Memories sifted to the front of her mind. The men who took her, their voices had affected her too. Those toxic voices. Sharp white ribbons streaked the air and clawed at her like fangs in the darkness. She’d thought it was the drugs. Maybe it still was.
“You have a truck?” She wanted to leave this place, but what chance did she have of defending herself against him if he turned out not to be her rescuer? She touched the metal cuff biting her wrist and followed the chain links to his. His wrist was strong and thick. If he wanted to hurt her, rape her or even kill her, she couldn’t escape.
He brought his hands under her elbows and forced her protesting muscles to work. Standing was a struggle, her balance wonky from either drugs in her system, or days of captivity, or hunger, or the whole ordeal.
She locked her knees like a newborn calf. “We need to call the police.”
“My phone is dead, but I can plug it in, once we get to my truck. Now, let’s go.”
When he turned to step away, she stayed rooted in place. He cussed, and she shook her head. “Hold your horses, Mister . . . what did you say your name was?”
“Zander Ambrose.”
“I’m not the enemy. Here.” He slid his fingers against his forehead and showed her something she couldn’t see. “As I searched for a woman in trouble tonight, I was attacked myself. When I woke, you and I were cellmates.”
“Why? What is this about? A cult? Some kind of biblical initiation?”
“I have no idea.”
Austin weighed the truth of his words. His voice rang strong and sure, but she’d been through too much not to be wary. Maybe he was a victim in this like she was. Right. Can you say Stockholm syndrome? She shook her head. Reality check. She’d been kidnapped, stripped naked and handcuffed to a massive stranger. Time to wake up from this nightmare.
He took a step closer and she tensed. He cussed again. “We don’t have time for this. We need to go.”
There wasn’t one good reason to trust him, in fact, she’d be a fool if she did. The stench of blood and death clung to him like he’d bathed in it. She shuddered. No sir, she was no fool. “This makes no sense.”
“Violence of this nature rarely does.”
She ran her hands down the weighty leather she wore. “How’d I get out here? Who are you, Mr. Ambrose?”
“I’m the man who freed us from that wall and covered you with my vest. I’m the man who is trying to help you.”
She stiffened. “You laid hands on an unconscious woman?”
“Would you rather I left you crumpled and naked on the cold concrete?”
“I’d rather not be here at all.” Austin drew a deep breath and assessed the garment belted around her. It was makeshift but offered her some modesty. “I thank you for this. And if you are a helpless victim here too, I’m sorry I—”
“I’m not helpless,” Zander snapped. He straightened to his full height and towered over her. His aura surged.
She shivered. The last thing she needed was to anger an Adonis Hells Angel, drug dealer, psychotic cult follower, or whoever he was. She needed to get outta Dodge. But without Stetson . . . She blinked fast against the sting in her eyes. He’d let off one heck of a yelp when she’d been attacked. He’d tried to keep her safe. Maybe someone from the apartment got him to a vet. She needed to believe that.
