How Beauty Saved the Beast (Tales of the Underlight)

by Garren, Jax

  How Beauty Saved the Beast

  By Jax Garren

  Book two of Tales of the Underlight

  Jolie Benoit left her old life behind to become an agent of the Underlight. Training under Sergeant Wesley Haukon, she’s honing her combat skills, all the while coping with the intense sexual attraction she feels for Hauk. She keeps their friendship casual, but when his high school sweetheart transfers into their division, Jolie finds herself grappling with jealousy.

  The Underlight gave Hauk a purpose, but he can’t escape his past completely. The physical and emotional scars from the fire that killed seven fellow Army Rangers will mark him forever. Jolie sends his protective instincts into overdrive, but he’s convinced he’ll never be worthy of her love.

  Hauk is determined to keep Jolie from harm. But when the Order of Ananke ambushes them with a new weapon that neutralizes Hauk, making him vulnerable, it’s Jolie who must tap into her hidden strengths to rescue him—or risk losing him forever…

  Sequel to How Beauty Met the Beast.

  52,000 words

  Dear Reader,

  This February, we decided that we would do something a little different for the month that usually celebrates Valentine’s Day. Not everything always needs to be hearts and roses—sometimes it can be swords, mayhem and spaceships as well—so we’re using this month to not only debut new science fiction and fantasy authors and series, but also to reintroduce some returning authors in these genres. And, of course, since we’re a publisher of variety, we have even more genres on offer this month.

  Debut author Steve Vera brings us Drynn, book one in his Last of the Shardyn urban fantasy trilogy. The heroes of two worlds reluctantly join forces to fight the Lord of the Underworld. Joining Steve in the urban fantasy category is David Bridger, returning with his sequel to Quarter Square. Golden Triangle is the story of a golden man, werewolf bikers and two nemeses.

  How Beauty Saved the Beast is the second book in Jax Garren’s continuing science fiction romance trilogy, and the sexual tension is ramping up! A burlesque dancer and a scarred soldier defend a colony of anarchists as friends and fellow agents, but when a new weapon threatens to rip them apart, sparks fly as the dancer must take the lead in a fight for the soldier’s life. Don’t miss the trilogy’s conclusion in May.

  Returning authors Stacy Gail, Inez Kelley, Shona Husk and Christopher Beats all deliver their respective book twos this month, all in four different genres. Donferet miss paranormal romance Savage Angel, fantasy romance Time Dancer, Western fantasy romance Dark Secrets and steampunk mystery Vacant Graves.

  Also in February, author Shawna Thomas launches her newest fantasy series with Journey of Awakening. Trained from birth for one purpose, Sara must reunite three ancient stones to restore balance to the land, but one of the stone keepers has other plans.

  Longing for a heroine who’s not your typical heroine? Have an interest in a unique fairy tale retelling? Tia Nevitt delivers both in her latest Accidental Enchantments offering, The Magic Mirror and the Seventh Dwarf, a Snow White retelling where the seventh dwarf is a young woman who walks into adventure with a runaway princess, a prince cursed by a magic mirror, and a romance of her own.

  Last, but definitely not least, are our February offerings for those of you who want to read outside of science fiction, fantasy and paranormal. Mystery author Monique Domovitch joins Carina Press with Getting Skinny, the first in her Chef Landry Mystery series. Charlie Cochrane delivers another heart-wrenching tale of love in male/male historical Promises Made Under Fire. And cool Southern belle Althea Grant’s subdued life as an art gallery owner burns out of control when a seductive bad-boy metal sculptor pushes her to explore her deepest, most thrilling desires in Platinum, Jeffe Kennedy’s newest BDSM erotic romance book.

  We’re pleased to introduce debut author Darcy Daniel with her contemporary romance Playing the Part. Famous actress Anthea Cane meets her match when she encounters an enigmatic blind farmer…but has she also met the man of her dreams?

  And despite my claim that not everything has to be hearts and roses, I’m still a die-hard romantic, so I hope all of you discover an amazing happily ever after this Valentine’s Day, whether between the pages of a Carina Press book or channel surfing on the couch next to you.

  We love to hear from readers, and you can email us your thoughts, comments and questions to generalinquiries@carinapress.com. You can also interact with Carina Press staff and authors on our blog, Twitter stream and Facebook fan page.

  Happy reading!

  ~Angela James

  Executive Editor, Carina Press

  www.carinapress.com

  www.twitter.com/carinapress

  www.facebook.com/carinapress

  Cont t c5ents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Jolie Benoit tapped a nervous fist against the steering wheel of her Nissan GT-R coupe as she squinted through the gloaming at the abandoned slaughterhouse. “They’ve been gone too long.” She turned to Travis, the other newbie on the field team, for confirmation. “Fifteen minutes is too long, isn’t it? They were supposed to be back in five.”

  He looked up from the laptop, where he was using their wait time to work on his latest news article. “Don’t ask me—I’m the team bard.”

  “Bard? You’ve been playing way too much D&D.”

  Travis snorted as he calmly went back to his computer.

  Jolie studied his profile. “Hauk brought you along to make sure I stayed in the car, didn’t he?” She couldn’t decide if she was asking him or simply announcing a fact. In a job that was supposed to be an in-and-out easy affair, Travis’s presence seemed superfluous, but she wouldn’t put it past the drill sergeant to sic a babysitter on her.

  “Maybe it’s taking longer than anticipated to find the documents. It’s a big place,” was Travis’s only comment.

  “Or maybe something went wrong.” Jolie tapped her head back against the seat. “I am not sit-in-the-car-and-wait girl. This job sucks.” She grabbed the door handle. “I’m going in.”

  Travis put a restraining hand on her arm. Jolie could’ve easily broken his hold, but she paused anyway for him to say, “Hauk will have my head if I let you do something stupid. So keep my head attached to my body. Stay in the car.” Yup. Travis was her babysitter. Great.

  “He’ll have to go through me to get to your head, I promise.” Jolie opened the door. “Besides, we’re anarchists. If he expects me to stick to the plan he dictated, he’s an idiot.”

  Travis snorted a laugh and let her out of the car. “Tell him I put up a good fight. Hey, and Jolie?”

  She looked back at him.

  “Be careful.”

  “I will.” She dropped her car fob in the front seat. “Keep the engine running, and drive away if you’re about to get caught.” She patted the roof. “I want my car in one piece.”

  Jolie bumped the door shut with her hip and headed for the abattoir. It had been shut down just last year when the business moved further out of town.

  Further out of town, harder for inspectors to reach. But The Underlight had gotten a tip that records were still kept in the offices—records that would prove the slau
ghterhouse had been falsifying injury reports to OSHA. It was no secret that slaughterhouses did it all the time, but catching them was the trick. And that was where The Underlight came in. The secret society’s work to expose corporate corruption wasn’t exactly legal, but in Jolie’s eyes, it was necessary. She’d been introduced to their ranks two months ago and had immediately signed up for field work. Hauk, also known as ex-Staff Sergeant Wesley Haukon, formerly of the Army Rangers, had given her basic training in defensive tactics, weapons and being generally sneaky. She wasn’t great in a fight yet, but she was strong and fast, and she’d gotten good at avoiding danger.

  Quietly as she could, Jolie made her way up to the building. Though only abandoned for a year, the roads were already breaking up into grass and the exterior of the fortress-looking structure was redecorated in neon graffiti a good eight feet into the air. Hauk and Brayden, The Underlight’s computer expert, had intended to go to the foreman’s office on the second floor, where it overlooked what had been the killing floor.

  Jolie stifled a shudder. Not just animals, but people had lost their lives here in a fast-paced push to keep the conveyor belts moving. And this factory hadn’t been shut down to build a place with safer machinery. No, the owners had wanted more space and faster equipment, which meant even more accidents. When the tip had come in that damning evidence could be found in the old foreman’s office, Hauk had immediately agreed to take the job.

  Jolie had volunteered to help. There’d been a fight, but The Overprotective One had finally agreed to let her drive. She had strict instructions to stay in the car, but they were ten minutes late exiting the building. Hauk and his overprotectiveness could go stuff it. She hadn’t joined The Underlight to sit in a car.

  She cautiously approached the side of the building. Just around the corner was a truck-sized hole in the brick that the company had cut out to remove equipment. Hauk and Brayden had entered through it.

  Everything seemed quiet. The hole gaped open into a darkness where thousands (millions?) of creatures had died. Somewhere past that maw a six-foot-seven, highly trained military genius and his hacker buddy had run into trouble. And she was going to follow them. Maybe that was stupid.

  She strained her ears for noise. Were those footsteps? She took a deep breath, hoping Hauk and Brayden were on their way out. Just in case, she kneeled down, lowering her profile like Hauk had taught her before peeking inside.

  The floor was bare until the twisting chute—the cattle’s last walk—took up an entrance to the left. An Escher-like mix of platforms and hanging walkways filled the two-story space at irregular intervals. Through it all meandered a conveyor belt full of silver hooks that gleamed above her in the dying sue hthe dyinlight.

  Jolie stifled another shudder.

  Maybe she’d eat a salad tonight.

  The footsteps grew louder. She wrenched her attention from those creepy hooks to scan the floor. Strangers trampled down the stairwell from the foreman’s office where Hauk and Brayden were supposed to be. But even from here she could see the office was dark inside.

  Dammit. Where were they? Had those men caught them? Were they in hiding?

  This was a non-entrance if she didn’t want to be spotted, but just on the other side of the gap was a fire escape. She could get up to the roof and drop down one of the ceiling’s many vent holes. Jolie’s specialty at the burlesque was aerial dancing. Her favorite was a lyra, a hoop suspended from the ceiling, but she was adept at dancing on a rope or a trapeze or silks. The idea of grabbing on to those hooks gave her the heebie-jeebies, but she wouldn’t have any problem navigating from the track they dangled from. From there she could make it to the foreman’s office unseen and start her search for what had gone wrong.

  * * *

  The plan had gone shitty wrong. Hauk slammed a fist into the door of the freezer unit, where he and Brayden had been stored. Luckily, like everything else in this gods-forsaken place, it was off. But that didn’t change the fact that they were trapped.

  Worse, if he knew Jolie Benoit, she was getting itchy feet about now and would be finding her way into the building soon…if she hadn’t already. He knew he shouldn’t have let her come. The girl had no fear, even when fear was well warranted.

  It was supposed to have been an easy mission: break into an abandoned building, retrieve a couple of buried folders and get out. Maybe a guard or two at most. But it was like a fucking convention of those damn Hands of Atropos out there, all armed with plenty of guns and zero brainpower to think for themselves.

  Literally. Atropos were marked by a tattoo that magically destroyed their free will, making them the world’s best pawns in a worldwide chess match. Now, The Austin Underlight’s knight and bishop were stuck in a freezer, and the redheaded queen was probably dangling from the rafters.

  Or at least, he damn well hoped Jolie was in the rafters, as he had absolutely no hope she’d stayed in the car like he’d wanted her to. But he’d repeatedly told her to get her ass in the air if she was ever in a bad situation. People don’t tend to look up for trouble, and she was every bit as graceful in the sky as she was on the ground.

  Graceful and stubborn and brave and gorgeous, with green eyes that made his heart beat like a machine gun. And if those Hands of Atropos hurt her, he’d rip their fucking heads off.

  “Uh…Hauk?” Brayden’s voice was strangely high. “We have a problem.”

  Hauk growled, “Ya think?”

  But Brayden was pointing at something specific under a pile of scrap metal in the corner.

  Hauk strode across the room to find wires attached to some electronic doohickey and… “C-4. Fuck.” They’d been set up. This whole tip had been a scam. “Oh…fuck. Do you know how to…” He waved his hand at it.

  “Uh, no. Hacking computers and disarming bombs is not the same thing. You?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  The door handle rattled. Hauk sprang for it, readofffor it,y to break the legs of the first person in so they could get the hell out. The door opened a crack. “Hauk?”

  Jolie. He didn’t know whether to be more pissed or relieved. “We’re here.”

  “The door is chained shut.”

  “Of course it is. There’s a bomb in here. We’ve got four minutes. Can you find a hammer?”

  “Hammer…wait, I saw a Coke can.”

  What the fuck? “What are you doing? Hit the lock with a hammer or a pipe. Then get the hell out of here.” But she was already gone.

  And returned two seconds later. “Do you still have a knife?”

  He pulled one from his ankle holster and stuck it, handle-first, through the crack.

  Before he could ask what she was doing, she asked, “You have weapons, and they still got you in there?”

  The incredulity in her voice was flattering but didn’t change that yes, despite packing enough weaponry to take on a platoon, he’d gotten his ass locked in a freezer. “Ambush. Six Atropos with rifles and distance. Can’t fight a guy I can’t reach.”

  “Pain-dar didn’t go off?”

  His laugh sounded more like a groan. He usually had an uncannily accurate sixth sense about impending violence. Someone had nicknamed it his “pain-dar” and the moniker had stuck.

  Brayden answered, “We’ve discovered a flaw in the pain-dar. Their intention today was to herd us, not shoot us. We marched nicely into the freezer with no violence whatsoever and nary a tingle in Hauk’s nethers.”

  “It’s in my neck, not my nethers, and I wasn’t nice. But yeah, no need to shoot us when they’ve got a strategically planted bomb. Which brings me to the vital question, and I do mean vital…what are you doing?”

  “Popping the lock.” Five seconds later, the chain rattled down and the door opened. Jolie stood in the frame with a strip of metal the size of her little finger.

  He sucked in a breath. Saving his ass, she looked even hotter than her normal excessively hot. Black clingy fabric covered her from feet to neck, showing off those rocking cur
ves. Her red curls were swept back into a ponytail. Her smile glowed as she looked him and Brayden up and down, way too proud of herself.

  He shook his head and strode out the door. He’d never hear the end of how she saved his ass on her first mission. “I’ll ask later what you did with a soda can. And remind me to kill you for disobeying orders.” He really meant another word that started with “ki” and ended with a double letter, but that wasn’t going to happen. F.R.I.E.N.D.S. Go friends.

  His friend winked. He stifled a groan.

  They turned toward the stairs, and she waved a lighter-sized gadget as they ran. “I checked the foreman’s office first and found—”

  Somebody came around the corner. Hauk shoved Jolie down, and a bullet slammed into the wall right where her head had been.

  “Hold that thought.” Hauk launched at the attacker.

  Nobody laid a finger on his friend.

  * * *

  It was fun to watch Hauk fight. He was a behemoth of a man with scars striping and pockmarking most of his body—he’d been in a fire in Afghanistan that had dnt>n that estroyed more than three-quarters of his skin—and had reclaimed his damaged exterior with tribal tattoos and metal piercings. Despite all the badass punk, he had the grace of a dancer when he tangoed with an opponent, all lethal choreography and a performer’s flare.

  Hauk slammed the gunner to the ground and somehow ended on his feet with a machine gun in his hands. More Hands of Atropos came dashing around the corner, only to be mowed down by Hauk’s new toy.

  “Go! Go!” he yelled in his booming Army voice. Jolie had seen it cow people—it had cowed her at first. But after two months of training with him, she’d come to a new conclusion.