by L. D. Rose
Deron showed up in an instant, stepping into Geoff’s office with his usual blasé attitude, but he sobered at the sight of Valerie’s face. “What’s up, Sarge? Val? Everything okay?”
“Did you relay the Delgado information to your partner?” Geoff asked, visibly angry at the apparent break in communication.
But there is no break.
“Yeah, Val, remember? I told you this morning, as soon as you came in. Hell, we talked about it for an hour. I know you’re upset, but—”
“No!” She closed the file and stood, gripping the bogus DNA results in her tingly hand. “I arrested a man this morning, a man named Blaze Knight, the prime suspect in this case. We spent hours with him, hours, Deron. We questioned him but he gave us nothing, and he literally just left with his lawyer, brother, whoever the hell he is, since we had nothing to hold him.” She pointed at Geoff. “Sir, you reamed me out earlier because I deviated from procedure during his arrest.” Then she aimed the accusatory finger at Deron. “And you helped me question him!”
They both gawked at her, as if stunned by her outburst.
As if they had no idea what she was talking about.
Panic settled in, the forensics report trembling in her hand. If this was a joke, she was going to kill them. “These results were inconclusive.” Valerie raised the report, looking to Deron desperately. “And what about the results on the gun? The Glock, the one Blaze gave you when he picked you up in that alley—”
She stopped talking. Now Deron looked at her like she was a crazy person, someone meant to be in a padded cell, like a monkey in a zoo who’d done something obscene. They both did.
Please, God, tell me they’re joking. I won’t kill them, I swear, just tell me they’re joking.
“Blaze?” Deron asked carefully, as if he were afraid she would crack at any moment. “Who’s Blaze?”
“Settle down, Valerie.” Geoff raised his hands in surrender. He’d said her first name. He never said her first name. “Maybe you need some time off.”
Anger surged through her, colliding with the panic, and she lit it on fire, made it grow, until it consumed the fear. “I don’t need time off!” She slapped Elena’s file on Geoff’s desk. “If this is some kind of sick joke—”
“Now that is out of line, Medeiros.” Geoff boomed as he too stood. “As of right now, you’re on leave until you can pull yourself together. What the fuck is the matter with you? Are you crazy?”
Valerie just stared at him, chest heaving, heart hammering, tears burning the backs of her eyes. Deron gaped at them both, shocked and speechless.
Then a voice somewhere in the back of her head whispered, Brainwashed. Rome Knight brainwashed them all. Just like the media.
Except for me.
SEVEN
Rome’s Aston Martin Vanquish sat in front of the police station, and Blaze headed straight for the passenger side door. It was the Carbon Black edition, and the paint absorbed the sunlight extremely well—so well it glowed like a beacon in Blaze’s vision. A crowd of thugs already ogled the car and they retreated at the sight of him. They stood back and watched, murmuring amongst themselves, no doubt planning to do something stupid.
Blaze stared them down menacingly. He almost wanted them to do something stupid. The mercury in his internal thermometer was rising again, because Elena was dead and everything was a mess now. Forcing his gaze away from the temptation of violence—especially outside of the precinct that just released him—Blaze turned to face his brother, knowing Rome hadn’t disarmed the car yet.
Rome’s smile was long gone, his face entirely grim. “I’d better not have made a mistake back there.”
“You didn’t,” Blaze said as Rome circled to the driver’s side. The Vanquish disengaged with a beep-beep, as if greeting its master.
“I hate to say it, B, but I’m not convinced.” They both climbed into their respective seats and fastened their seatbelts. “If this comes back to bite me in the ass, I’m taking it out on you.”
“It won’t. You’ll see.”
Rome let out a grunt as he started the car, Nine Inch Nails blaring over the sound system. With one last glance at their gangster audience, he slid onto the street like a manta ray in dark water, blending into the South Bronx traffic.
Which reminded Blaze . . . “We need to get my car.”
Rome shot him a no-shit-Sherlock look. “I know.”
Of course he did. Deron had kindly informed Blaze the NYPD had towed his car to a tow yard back near the gas station in New Rochelle. And since Rome had invaded every mind in that building, he knew all he needed to know. Maybe more than he preferred.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
Rome steadied the wheel with one hand as he pulled a folded stack of papers from his inner jacket pocket and tossed them onto Blaze’s lap. “Burn them as soon as you get the chance.”
Blaze unfolded the papers, their color violet from Rome’s body heat. “What are they?”
“A couple of forensics reports, a photocopy of your license and registration, all the documentation with your name on it. Kayne will make sure you’re wiped from the databases.”
Kayne, the Order’s proverbial IT guy and leader of the Trinity in Boston. It was no surprise Rome had snatched the paperwork, but it brought Blaze little relief. If Rome was anything, he was thorough.
Very thorough.
Deron had given Blaze his personal effects, but his cigarettes had gone missing. And that just pissed him off even more, because he sure as hell could use one right now.
“So, what, you’re not going to tear me a new asshole? Tell me how fucked up I am, what a shit storm I’ve made, how I need to start thinking with my head and not my dick?”
“Looks like you’re doing that all by yourself.” Rome glided onto I-95, sparing Blaze an amused glance.
Blaze let out an exasperated sigh and dropped his head back on the headrest. Five hours. He’d spent five hours in the forty-eighth precinct, mostly alone.
And it had given him time to think.
Someone must’ve followed him, must’ve known he’d been with Elena. They wanted to make an example of her, since they’d used his element against her. Someone wanted to set him up. If that someone was a vampire, and it more than likely was, they’d made it happen through a human. Whether the human was a hit man, a sadist, or just some mindless minion, Blaze would hunt the normal down and cremate him along with the leech slime who’d hired him.
Someone wants to send me a message.
And sure as fuck, he heard it loud and clear.
“Did you care about her?”
The question yanked Blaze back into reality, bringing his thoughts to a screeching halt. He looked at Rome to find his brother’s shaded eyes locked on the road as he took the exit to New Rochelle.
Blaze settled his attention on the passing cars. It was already five o’clock, but the east coast still had three hours of sunlight. The normals were in no rush to get home—yet.
You can’t dodge this one, even if you don’t know how to answer it.
“We’d just started. I didn’t have enough time to.”
Rome nodded and that was it—end of conversation. He pulled up in front of the tow yard, parked the Vanquish, and turned off the engine. Blaze could see the Chevelle, the contour and shape of it, sitting in the back of the trash-ridden lot. When Rome tensed, it shifted the air, changing the currents of the heat energy he emitted.
Something was wrong.
“What is it?”
He let out a low whistle. “You’re not going to like this.”
Blaze already didn’t like it. As a matter of fact, he didn’t like anything about today.
They both stepped out of the Vanquish and entered the tow yard, heading straight for the Chevelle without checking into the
front office. The closer they came, the more Blaze could tell his car had been vandalized. Someone had taken a bat to it, or some other blunt object. Shattered glass reflected the sun’s rays in all directions, casting red-orange prisms in his vision.
All the windows were busted. The car’s shape and contour was no longer the way it appeared from a distance, no longer smooth and seamless, but rough and jagged. The tires had been slashed, making the chassis sag to the ground like a broken corpse.
And that was just what he could see.
Blaze’s blood turned into lava in his veins. “What’s the full damage?”
Rome opened the passenger’s side door and it nearly fell off its hinges. Blaze swore as he stalked around to the driver’s side, feeling his inner mercury cap and swell.
“There’s white spray paint all over it,” Rome said. “And they took a blade to the leather.”
Blaze wrenched open the driver’s side door and tore it clear off. He tossed it aside and gripped the leather seat, even though he couldn’t feel it.
“Does it say anything?”
He heard a ticking sound, barely audible, soft and distant. Tick-tick-tick-tick. He tried to gauge the direction of the source, turning his attention on the steering wheel, when he was yanked out of the car and shoved face-first into the dirt.
Then the world exploded.
Blistering heat swamped him, filled with the stench of burning gasoline. The sound was incredible, rattling his eardrums and rendering him deaf. Smoke filled his lungs, searing his throat and chest as if he were breathing fire. Blaze coughed, gagged, tasting grease and soot on his tongue. Rome did the same beside him, cowering in the dirt and attempting to cover him.
The fool.
Twisted metal and debris fell like hail around them, flaming hot shards striking their clothes and singeing their skin. The wall of heat receded as quickly as it came, blown back by the summer wind. Blaze managed to prop himself up on his forearms, still coughing and retching. As Rome rose up beside him, Blaze grasped his brother’s shoulder.
“You all right?”
“Yeah,” Rome sputtered. “You?”
“Yeah.”
Rome flipped onto his back and propped himself on his elbows, wincing. His shades had come off during the blast and he surveyed the wreckage with narrowed eyes. At least they hadn’t melted onto his face.
Blaze felt for his sunglasses and found them intact on the ground.
“There was a bomb under the dash,” Rome said hoarsely. “You triggered it when you opened the driver’s side door.”
And if Rome hadn’t been here, Blaze would be splattered all over the dirt right now.
Blaze spat out residual ash and the bitter taste of destruction, vaguely aware he trembled from another close call. “Who did it?”
Rome looked at him with his goat-slit eyes, breathing heavily as he tried to get oxygen into his lungs. He hesitated, delaying the inevitable.
“Tell me!” Blaze bellowed in a fresh burst of anger, grabbing the front of Rome’s T-shirt.
But you already know, don’t you?
“Cyrus,” Rome finally said, confirming Blaze’s worst fears. “It was Cyrus. He left his mark all over it.”
Blaze was so full of rage he shook from it.
Three hundred and seventy-five pounds of metal lay across his chest and Blaze pumped it in the air over and over, fueling on the burn. His blood pressure was sky high and sweat covered him from head to toe, his heart going off like a nail gun against his ribcage. His head pounded so hard he felt as if someone had taken a hammer to his skull, his temples throbbing viciously. He’d likely stroke out and he didn’t give a fuck.
On his third hour in the compound’s training facility and just getting started, he knew better than to walk out now. If he left before he exhausted the well of fire in his gut, he would burn everything he touched to the ground.
Along with anyone who stood in his way.
The corroded door to his past had blown wide open, releasing the nasty memories of his stay in the ninth level of hell with Cyrus Chimola and his cronies. The day had finally come, when the snake slithered out from beneath its rock, dragging filth and nightmares along with it.
And no matter what Blaze did, his mind was a merciless son-of-a-bitch, forcing his proverbial eyelids open to watch a past he never wanted to see again.
It was as cold as a meat locker.
Sprawled out on a stone slab with his hands and feet chained to each corner, his body naked and vulnerable, Blaze had no idea where he was or how long he’d been there. In hell, time was nothing but an illusion. He felt as if eternities had passed, his previous life seeming a world away now, just a wistful dream. He wasn’t even sure if he could recognize his brothers’ voices if he heard them again.
Christ, he missed them.
Something dripped incessantly and it took him a moment to realize it was his own blood, spilling onto the floor below. The smell of it, along with piss and shit, was overwhelming, a rancid stench all his own. In the stygian darkness that surrounded him, he couldn’t open his eyes because they’d been sewn shut.
When they’d taken away his vision, they brought a whole new dimension to the horror.
There’d been times when the pain was excruciating and times when he felt nothing at all. There’d even been times when he felt pleasure, unwanted and hateful. He’d never expected to wake after they pierced his jugular with rusty needles and injected their poisons into him. But he always had, and lately he looked forward to the sharp pricks in his neck.
They were better than the countless fangs that had sunk there instead.
Now sober and acutely aware of the damage done to his body, how was he still alive? Several of his bones were broken, their desperate attempts at healing misaligned and distorted. Every inch of him throbbed, sore and inflamed, raw and infected. He felt incredibly weak, tremendously tired, to the point where breathing alone was a burden.
He would die down here. He’d accepted it long ago, and yet he still awoke, time after time. He still breathed, moment after moment, his stubborn heart refusing to give up.
He wondered if God was no less a monster than the leech who’d done this to him.
“I must give you credit, hybrid. You’re resilient.”
The black voice in the foul dark no longer had any effect on him. After he’d given up on escaping, apathy had settled in, replacing the fear.
Replacing the hope.
Blaze said nothing, stale air rasping in and out of his lungs. He tasted copper and dirt, his mouth parched and his lips cracked. He almost wanted Nabila to waterboard him again, if only to satisfy his thirst.
And he was hungry. Not only for food, but for blood.
God, he was so hungry.
Cyrus set something down beside him. Blaze heard it sizzle, the toxic scent of it invading his nostrils. It was a smell he’d actually liked once upon a time.
It was the smell of hot tar.
Blaze’s heart kicked up a notch, a frail bird in the cage of his emaciated chest. He could almost feel Cyrus smile at his fear, but he was too ruined to care.
Maybe death would embrace him this time.
“It’s simple, firestarter,” Cyrus said as a wallop of burning liquid hit Blaze’s gut, boiling his skin instantly. Blaze squeezed his already sealed eyelids shut, body tensing and back arching, but he didn’t make a sound. “All you have to do is tell me where they are. That’s it. And all of this could end.”
Bullshit. Everything that came out of that bastard’s mouth was bullshit.
Another wallop, a streak, a splash against Blaze’s face. The pain was terrific, and the stench of burning flesh blended with the reek of his death. But he still said nothing, his lips as sealed as his thread-ridden eyes.
“Do you want to die, hybrid?”
He did. More than anything, he wanted all of this to end. But revealing anything to this monster wouldn’t stop the pain. It wouldn’t stop Cyrus from taking everyone Blaze cared about and destroying them all the same.
Blaze slowly became aware that Cyrus had traced a pattern on him. The leech marked him like a slab of meat, branding him as if he were cattle. And once the tar dried, the bastard would tear it off, leaving gaping holes in Blaze’s body and soul.
Chimola’s tone softened. Gentle, soothing, and full of lies. “Surrender and I’ll stop.”
Blaze’s chest erupted with fire, and he gasped as the blistering tar swirled across his skin. He managed to utter two words, the guttural sounds escaping his throat between pants. Cyrus hovered over him, close enough for Blaze to smell the sulfur of his skin, but far enough that he was out of reach of Blaze’s jaws. The leech had learned his lesson when Blaze nearly gnawed off the side of his face during one of his ‘games.’
And Blaze had paid dearly for it.
“What did you say?”
“I said,” Blaze’s voice scraped like nails on a chalkboard. “Fuck. You.”
Cyrus lifted his head and laughed, a demonic sound filled with the promise of pain and agony. “No, firestarter. Fuck you.”
And when the tar hit Blaze’s groin, he finally screamed.
Blaze slammed the barbell into its rack and sat up, chest heaving from more than just a bench press. He met his reflection in the mirrored wall to find a seething beast staring right back at him, a monster he wanted to shatter into pieces. He could still see it . . .
