In the shadows, she barely recognized the widening of her attackers’ eyes. She didn’t dwell on it. Free from her prison, she scrambled to her feet and ran.
Three steps later, cruel fingers in her long black hair dragged her to a stop. Another hand latched onto her wrist, spinning her about.
All trace of humor and warmth fled her attacker’s voice. “Bitch. Stay put.”
Faith did the only thing she hadn’t tried, the one thing she should have done the moment her date ran for his life. She opened her mouth and screamed.
****
“Help me!”
Belen froze halfway around the corner of the block, five minutes away from the even more abandoned section of town and his converted, warehouse, home.
“Oh, God, someone hel—” The panicked feminine voice choked on the last consonant.
Far worse from the sudden understanding his interventions had taken a drastic and wholly unacceptable turn, was another realization. He knew that voice.
He had been avoiding it ever since he’d heard the first melodic, poisonously virtuous notes two years ago when he ran face to face with its owner and discovered why his thirteen-year-old runaway had suddenly decided to go home.
Faith.
Something strange and wildly formidable rose up inside Belen. He spun in the opposite direction, bolting for the alley. Long, ground-covering strides took him down the slippery sidewalk. Though her very existence pained him, the idea of her suffering cut him in half. She didn’t deserve this sort of fate.
Not that anyone did, but Faith…
A low growl rumbled in his throat as he rounded the corner into the dark shadows. He’d rip the bastards that thought to harm her into pieces. Tear them limb from limb. Offer their broken, bloody bits to the Ancestors in his father’s name.
It took less than a second for Belen’s eyesight to adjust to the deeper shadows and find Faith. She lay flat on her back in a puddle of slush and grime. Her head twisted back and forth in feeble protest, and her voice had become little more than a plaintive whisper as she pushed at the man kneeling between her legs. Behind her head, a stockier man looked on, one hand shoved into his open fly and a twisted smirk on his face.
The foul blood in Belen’s veins surged to hungry life. For the first time in his existence, he gave it complete freedom. Hatred boiled through him, the instinctual need to kill, all-consuming.
He reached the skinny kid shoving at Faith’s skirts before the other ever noticed he’d arrived. Belen took the man’s head between his hands and gave it a savage twist. With a glorious crack his neck snapped like a matchstick.
Faith barely moved as Belen threw the lifeless body off her and lifted his murderous glare to the remaining bastard.
“Shit, dude! We were—”
An unholy sound tore from Belen’s throat. Before he could snatch the pathetic fool into his deadly grasp, the man’s face washed white. He bolted like the wind, belt buckle jangling.
Belen would have chased him for miles if Faith hadn’t moaned the precise moment he lunged sideways. The sound stilled him. His chest heaved as he struggled to beat his demonic half into submission. Slowly, he pulled himself out of the pit of evil and turned his gaze on her.
Deep turquoise eyes peeked through long thick lashes, wide in momentary disbelief. Then, as recognition settled over her, she lifted one hand and rested her fingertips on his the sleeve of his leather jacket. With a faint grimace, she ran the tip of her tongue over her cracked and bleeding lower lip. The faintest hint of a pained smile touched one corner of her mouth. “Belen,” she whispered.
As her voice died into the wind, her hand fell limply to her side. An invisible fist slammed into Belen’s gut as he allowed his gaze to roam down the length of her body. Bruises along her shins and around her wrists already turned her china-fair skin purple. Scratches marred her chest where they had torn open the buttons on her green cardigan sweater. The frigid air turned her exposed upper thighs angry red and scrapes covered the left side of one hip, where she’d evidently rolled. Or been dragged.
He wanted to kill the men all over again.
Curling one fist, he bit down a stream of oaths and narrowed his gaze at the lifeless body lying a handful of feet away. Death hadn’t been good enough for that asshole. It came too swift, lacked the fear Faith had suffered.
But the man was dead, and the other would be soon enough. Right now, Faith needed Belen’s full attention. He couldn’t tell if anything had been broken, or if the darkening splotch of purple on her temple came from something worse than a fist. Her swollen eye also had him questioning her vision.
He closed his eyes to her injuries, sucked in a deep calming breath, and scooped her into his arms. Leaving the body for the police and an inevitable cold case, he cradled Faith protectively against his chest. Ancestors above, just touching her hurt. She was so gentle, so free to give her heart, so inherently decent…
Swallowing hard, Belen steeled himself against the pinpricks of longing that stabbed down his spine and struck off at a brisk pace toward his home. He knew a lot of things about Faith Winters—the lengths she’d go to for troubled teens, how children’s suffering made her weep silent tears when she thought no one was looking, even the sweet venom of her kiss.
But where she lived wasn’t anywhere on that closely guarded list. He couldn’t take her to the hospital without raising questions about the body or how he’d managed to obliterate her attacker’s neck. Which left one choice—Isolde.
Isolde who would take one look at Faith and somehow realize Belen was responsible for what had happened tonight.
He tucked Faith closer against his body, ignored the compelling whiff of almonds that drifted off her skin and set his jaw against the inevitable. Isolde might have every reason to curse his name, but damn it, somehow, he’d make this up to Faith.
He’d start by healing her injuries. Then, he intended to convince his younger brother, Dáire, to erase the attack from her mind. Come morning, she could go back to her life, never knowing the horror of tonight. She would remain as unscarred and untouched as she had always been…and she would never ever know it had been Belen who answered her calls for help.
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Ensnared by Blood Page 13
