He pounced on her words with all the finesse of a Council interrogator. “Who’s Getty?”
Lina stiffened at the realization that she’d unintentionally revealed more than she’d intended. She was starting to get soft around Ronin. She’d have to watch that. Or maybe it was the damn lager.
“He’s no one.”
Ronin stopped dead and turned to face her. “Bullshit, Lina. Can’t you—just once—tell me something about your past?”
Lina stared at him, the need to protect her secrets warring with the conflicting desire to alleviate just a little of the pain she saw in Ronin’s eyes. In the end, the words reluctantly tore themselves out of her mouth.
“Getty was the mercenary who trained me when I moved to this dimension. He gave me these”—she motioned toward the weapons hidden under her jacket—“and he taught me how to fight.”
“But why? Why choose a career as a mercenary? It must have gone against every instinct you had. I’m only half angel, and at times, I still have to fight my impulse to maintain peace when I’m on a job. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be for you.”
Not so hard, it turned out, when one was dead inside. She started walking again, and he followed. “I found the job suited me. Getty helped me to look past my squeamishness, taught me to use speed to compensate for my physical weaknesses. He made me stronger.”
And then, like everyone else in her life, he’d left her.
“Sounds like you cared for him,” Ronin said.
“I did. He was like a father figure.”
“Where is he now?”
“Dead,” she said flatly, the delicious aftereffects of the lager dissipating faster than she would have liked. “The years of hard living finally caught up to him. His heart gave out on him about eight months ago.”
Ronin walked beside her in silence for several beats before saying, “Sorry.”
“Yeah.”
Me too.
A few minutes later, they came to a stop in front of the address the goblin had provided. It was a small, six-story building on the end of the street which, like hers, appeared to be a walk-up. Lina rested her hands on her hips and surveyed it. “There have to be at least twelve apartments in here. How do we find the right one?”
“Search one at a time, I suppose.” Ronin walked to the front door and tried the handle. As expected, it was locked. The lock was of human construction and could easily be broken, but such an obvious break-in might attract some unwanted attention.
When Ronin looked back at her, Lina glanced up toward the roof. “Work our way down?”
“Sounds good.” His boyish grin indicated he was looking forward to letting his wings loose just as much as she was. Guess they couldn’t escape that part of their heritage.
They rounded the corner to the side street, which wasn’t as brightly lit as the front. Ronin tugged off his lightweight sweater while Lina unzipped and shrugged out of her jacket, leaving her top half clad in nothing more than her black tank top. Then with a pop of her shoulders, her wings grew out of her back.
She let out a moan of relief.
Otherworlder scientists had intellectual reasoning for how winged species like angels could absorb their wings into their body and then grow them back out at will. To Lina, it was and always would be pure magic. What else could explain the tingling sensation, the feeling of rightness, that accompanied each spread of her wings? It was the closest she ever came to happiness these days.
She glanced at Ronin’s folded wings, once again struck by the majestic beauty of the angelic appendages. Long, full, and white, they arched over his shoulders and tipped low to the ground. He stretched his wings and, with a practiced flick, propelled upward into the air. Lina fought the desire to break out into a smile as she followed him, her leather jacket clutched firmly in her hands.
All too soon, they landed on the roof and reabsorbed their wings. The feeling of euphoria fled almost as quickly as it had come. Sometimes she wondered whether angels were meant to absorb their wings at all. Doing so always sparked such a sense of loss.
Well, if that was the case, then she deserved to have them clipped. What right did she have to mourn the loss of wings, when she’d lost far worse than that?
“You seem awfully introspective all of a sudden,” Ronin noted.
Lina schooled a smirk onto her face. “And that’s abnormal?”
“Touché.” His lips quirked into a smile as he tugged his sweater back over his head.
Lina slid her jacket on, leaving it unzipped so her weapons were within easy reach, and followed Ronin to the roof exit. He reached for the door handle and frowned.
“It’s unlocked.”
“Maybe whoever was up here last forgot to lock it.” But when Lina took a closer look, she saw the lock had been smashed. “This was broken from the outside.”
Ronin gave her a loaded glance. “Someone flew up here and broke into the building.”
A second later, the faint sound of a muffled scream drifted up from the stairwell—barely discernible even with her hyper-sensitized hearing. Instinctively recognizing that the two things were connected, Lina threw the door open. In an effort to save time, she jumped the length of the stairs and swung open the door leading onto the top floor, where the scream had originated from. A second gasping cry sounded out. With Ronin hot on her tail, Lina turned left and rounded the corner. She came to a stop in front of an opened doorway.
Just inside stood an elderly woman. A casserole dish lay on the floor at her feet, the cheesy contents spilling out onto the worn beige carpet. A few feet away lay a body in front of a battered leather couch. Blood pooled out several feet onto the carpet. It only took one glance for Lina to confirm the corpse was Sam. There was no mistaking the black Mohawk.
Behind Lina, Ronin let out a muffled curse. “Calm her down before someone else hears her.”
The elderly woman turned at the sound of his voice and, upon seeing them, screamed even louder. She backed away, tripping over her casserole dish and almost falling to her knees.
“Lina. Use your calm,” Ronin urged, but she stayed there, frozen. She hadn’t used that particularly ability in years—had sworn it off the day Sara had died—and she wasn’t about to turn to it now. Truth be told, she didn’t even know if she remembered how.
Finally Ronin swore and brushed past her, closing his arms over the woman’s shoulders. Tendrils of calming energy poured out of him, enveloping and soothing the surrounding space. Lina took two clumsy steps backward, until she stood safely outside of its reach.
The woman calmed down, and Ronin asked, “What happened?”
“I…I live across the hall. Samuel always helps me up with my groceries. Such a nice boy, despite his appearance. So I occasionally drop off a casserole to say thanks. Poor young man, all alone. I worry that he doesn’t eat enough.”
When her gaze began to drift back toward the body on the floor, Ronin gently edged her to the side, so she faced away from it. “What did you see tonight?”
“The door was unlocked and slightly open. So unlike him. I thought he might have forgotten to close it, so I pushed inside to call out his name. That’s when I saw…oh my heavens.”
Her mouth quivered, and Ronin rubbed his arms over her shoulders. “Shh. It’ll be okay. Come, I’ll walk you back to your apartment.”
“But the police—”
“We’ll take care of it.”
He propelled her toward the door, and Lina automatically stepped aside to allow them room to pass.
“Check out the body,” Ronin said to her in a low tone. “I’ll try to keep her calm as long as I can.”
Lina caught the hidden meaning behind his words. He could calm the woman for a period of time, but eventually she would insist on calling the police. Unless they wanted to spend the night down at the station, fielding questions they couldn’t rightfully answer, they needed to be long gone before the police arrived. Human investigators meant well, but they would be of no help,
and anything nonhuman about Sam would be passed off as a genetic anomaly by the human doctors who were too ignorant to understand what they were looking at.
“Can’t believe it,” the woman muttered. “He was such a nice boy.”
A stifling sliver of emotion compressed Lina’s chest. Until Sam had betrayed her, she’d also thought he’d been a good person. Hell, maybe he had been, and his hand had been forced by some element outside of his control. Whatever the reason, Lina found that she was sad he was dead.
Once Ronin and the elderly woman were gone, Lina stepped further inside Sam’s apartment. She wasn’t particularly squeamish—anymore—but there was a whole lot of blood pooling on the floor around the body. She moved across the room and stopped at Sam’s feet, taking her time in moving her gaze upward. The lower half of his body was casually splayed out, with the top of his feet pointing straight toward the ceiling. From this vantage point, it almost looked like he’d lain down on the floor and fallen asleep.
Or been laid there once he was dead, more likely.
Knowing she couldn’t put it off any longer, Lina lifted her gaze upward, coming to a stop at the source of the blood. His neck. His head had been completely severed from his body—the only certain way to kill a demon.
Gods, he hadn’t been dead long. Not long at all. The blood had barely started to congeal.
She spotted the glimmer of something along Sam’s neck and crouched down, making sure to avoid the viscous liquid that even now seeped out further along the carpet. So gross.
When the instinctive urge to gag took hold of her, she placed a hand over her nose and mouth. A footstep sounded right outside the apartment, and she shot her gaze up to see Ronin entering.
“She’s having a cup of tea, but my calming effect won’t last long. Have you found anything?”
“Yeah.” When Ronin dropped down beside her, she pointed it out. “Looks like he was decapitated with something like fishing wire.”
He reached into the pocket of his jeans and drew out a napkin, then lifted Sam’s hands one by one and examined the fingernails. “I don’t see any skin under the fingertips. No apparent signs of struggle.”
“Right. For the most part, he looks peaceful.” Eager to leave behind the sight of Sam’s sightless eyes, Lina rose to her feet and headed for the front door. She examined the lock and doorframe. “No sign of forced entry.”
“He knew his attacker.” Ronin stood and crumpled the napkin before sliding it back into his pocket. His eyes met hers across the room. “This is related to the dark fae.”
Exactly the conclusion she’d reached. “So Sam attacks us, and then the man who hired him to attack us kills him? Why?”
Ronin’s puzzled gaze met her own, just as the muted blare of a siren drifted into Lina’s ears.
He picked up the sound at the same time she did. After taking one last look around the apartment, he motioned toward the door. “Time to go.”
Chapter Eight
As if his life was some damn broken record stuck on repeat, Dagan found himself back at his old, familiar hangout—Opiate. And this time, he had a real reason to drink. The fight with Ronin left a bitter taste in his mouth that no amount of hard liquor could wash down. Didn’t stop him from trying, though.
He knew his own shortcomings. He’d lived with them all his life. But the fact that Ronin thought so little of him hurt more than he would ever care to admit. His brother thought he was worthless.
Hell, maybe Ronin was right.
Dagan managed to down a fair number of shots before getting propositioned, which must be a testament to how pissed off he looked. Usually it didn’t take nearly so long for a willing and available woman to come his way.
“You look like you’re having a bad night,” a smooth, sultry, feminine voice practically purred.
He swiveled his head so see a pretty brunette with eyes the color of moss. The long, lean lines of her body and her catlike eyes marked her as some sort of feline shifter. Wildcat, if he had to make a guess. Something about her triggered a spark of a memory buried deep inside his brain, but it was gone before he could grasp it.
“Definitely not one of my best,” he replied.
“I can relate.” Her mouth ticked upward, and she inched closer to where he sat. Lifting a brow suggestively, she said, “Want to make it better?”
Sex was the last thing on his brain right now. He opened his mouth to decline her less-than-subtle invitation, when the memory of Ronin’s words flashed through his mind. His brother had called him a man-whore. It didn’t take too much logic to determine that everyone else Dagan cared about thought the same thing. So why not live up to their expectations?
“Yeah. Why not?”
He hadn’t really meant to say that aloud, but she didn’t give him a chance to take his words back. Grinning over at him, she said, “Then let’s go.”
He hesitated for a fraction of a second before finishing his drink and rising from the barstool. “Your place?”
“Why wait?” She turned toward the rear part of the club and, after giving him a suggestive glance over her shoulder to confirm he was following, led him toward the back.
Her shoulder-length brown hair gleamed in the artificial lighting. Dagan found himself wishing it was another shade entirely—a soft, moonlit blond. As soon as he caught the direction his thoughts had taken, he cursed himself. He and Lina were never going to happen. The sooner he got that through his thick skull, the better off he’d be. Lina deserved way better than he could ever give. And random assignations in a seedy nightclub were more his thing anyway.
No sooner had they passed through the gauzy curtain into the back part of the club than the brunette shifter edged his back toward the wall and plastered her front to his. “I’ve seen you here before, you know.”
“Yeah?” he responded dully.
“Mm-hm. You have a bit of a reputation among the women, actually. You know how to have a good time, and you don’t expect anything in return.” She rose to her tiptoes and suggestively slid her tongue along his throat. “Just the kind of man I need tonight.”
That’s me. No strings attached.
Suddenly he hated it all. Hated the reputation he’d developed. Was this really what the rest of his life was going to be like?
When the woman realized he wasn’t responding, she moved back to throw him a puzzled look. “Something wrong?”
Dagan took his first good look at her, and ribbons of the elusive remembrance she’d sparked earlier fluttered back to his mind. He frowned and grasped her arms. “Hold on.”
Like a butterfly shedding its cocoon, the forgotten memory broke free from the recesses of his mind, floating on a symphony of heavy, broken chords.
Dagan was sixteen years old, and in love for the first time. Their maid was smart, beautiful, and—being three years older than him—already far more sexually experienced. Two weeks ago, the unthinkable had happened. She’d told him she felt the same. She’d taught him how to please a woman.
She was everything sweet and good, or so he’d thought…
Until the day he found her on her knees in front of his father. A show Mammon had clearly orchestrated.
“Why?” he asked his father. Later, when he could speak again.
Mammon shrugged. “I saw you notice her several weeks ago.”
Dagan knew his father despised him, but this was beyond cruel. His heart felt like it would wrench from his body with every beat. “I thought she loved me.”
Mammon laughed. “That’s because you thought she was capable of an emotion like that. She’s not. She’s a woman. Women are objects meant to be used. Nothing more. The sooner you learn that lesson, the better off you’ll be.”
“But…” When Dagan’s hands curled into fists, he hid them behind his back. He’d learned long ago that demonstrating aggression toward his father was a mistake. He couldn’t beat him—demons were never stronger than their fathers. “I loved her.”
“Love?” Mammon threw
his head back, and his loud laugh filled the room. “When are you going to learn? There’s no such thing. There’s only money and power, and the games we must play to get what we want.”
“Hey, are you okay?”
The brunette’s words snapped Dagan back to the present. He stared at her in horror. How could he have forgotten all about that part of his past?
Holy hell.
Sudden understanding punched him in the gut, almost doubling him over. All this time—all these women—he’d subconsciously been acting on his father’s lesson. Acting on the premise that he couldn’t be loved…that women were nothing more than objects to be used. And he’d chosen to be only with women who would reinforce that theory.
Even though he knew on an intellectual level how evil and just plain wrong his father was, he’d somehow let the bastard’s disgusting beliefs color the way he viewed life. The way he treated women.
How sick was that?
Suddenly he found himself wishing Mammon would make himself known. That he’d come out of hiding and try to attack them, as his brothers feared he would. Because if he did, Dagan would kill the fucker. Whatever it took.
The woman’s mouth puckered in annoyance. “Do you want to fuck me or not?”
“Not,” he gasped, pushing her away. The walls of the club seemed to be closing in, suffocating him.
Dagan blindly staggered toward the exit. He didn’t know where he was going but he did know one thing…
He had to get the hell out of here.
…
The call came at half past one in the morning, right when Keegan was about to leave his home office to join his wife Brynn and their infant son Aegin in their bedroom. He glanced at his cell phone, silently cursing as he read the caller identification. It was Tenos, the moon elf who’d recently been granted the position of Council liaison for the greater New York territory. Keegan had come to know him rather well in the months since Mammon had escaped from the Council prison. Understandably, the Council had decided that keeping tabs on him and his brothers might lead to Mammon’s recapture.
Under better circumstances, Keegan might even consider the moon elf a friend. But he knew Tenos wouldn’t be calling at this hour unless there was bad news to impart.
Call of the Siren (Demons of the Infernum) (Entangled Edge) Page 7
