by Tracy Tappan
Tonĩ leaned behind the nightstand and vomited. Doctor or not, she was done with this night.
“Tonĩ?” Jaċken heaved to his feet, the front of his shirt plastered to his body with blood, his eyes searching wildly for her. Spotting her in her hidey hole, he raced over and crouched down before her. “Are you all right? Jesus—!”
She launched herself out of her nook and into her husband’s arms. “Th-thank God you got here when you did.” She trembled against him. “That Om Rău almost…almost….”
“I saw,” he said in a clogged voice. “I’m so sorry I didn’t get here sooner, honey.” He leaned back to look at her, brushing his thumb over her split lip. “Shit,” he hissed.
She wrapped her hand around his wrist. “How did you get here at all?”
“Dev and Sedge were topside tonight on another mission and received your emergency call on their cells, too. They came to the Doubletree Hotel, roused us, and then we followed the homing signal in your purse.”
“My purse?”
“Anyone who goes topside gets wired up with a tracking device. Us warriors have it in our cell phones. It’s one of our normal security measures.”
“Well, it would’ve been nice to have known that. I felt really damned hopeless.” Tonĩ laid her cheek against her husband’s chest, not caring that she was getting herself all bloody. “You guys have to be better about filling in your new co-leader.”
Jaċken laughed shakily. “Yeah.”
“I want to go home.”
“I bet you do.” Jaċken’s tone was gruff. He kissed her hair.
Arc slipped silently through the broken skylight above, landing on cat feet. He was covered in dirt and grime and his nose was bleeding. “What the hell,” he swore, glancing at the headless corpse. “You guys were supposed to save that dick wad for me.”
Jaċken came to his feet, drawing Tonĩ up with him. “What that lowlife did to my mate way surpasses what he did to you and your brother, Costache.”
Arc’s gaze raked over Tonĩ’s sheet-clad body, her bloody mouth and bruised eye. He paled a little. “Oh, man, I’m sorry. Tonĩ, are you—?”
The door was front-kicked open by Mürk and the bald Om Rău stormed inside the room, a rifle jacked back against his shoulder. “Everyone get your hands where I can see them!” he shouted, pinning the barrel briefly on each of them.
Sedge and Dev slowly raised their hands in the air, the smirks on their faces making it a mocking gesture. Arc and Jaċken didn’t comply, both of them just glaring.
“Up!” Mürk snarled, “or I drop you.”
“Now would be nice.” Dev drawled the comment.
Mürk’s brows snapped low in confusion, but in the next moment, a belt whipped over Mürk’s head from behind and looped around his neck. “Howdy, cue ball,” Gabor said, jerking the belt into a tight garrote. “Not fun having someone sneak up behind you, is it?”
Mürk wheezed and reddened.
Dev plucked the rifle out of Mürk’s hand. “Gimme that.”
Gábor shoved Mürk farther into the room. “You gonna end this guy,” he asked Jaċken, “same as that other?”
Mürk angled his gaze to Rën’s lifeless body, fear rocketing through his eyes and his face staining a deeper shade of red.
Jaċken bent to unsheathe a knife from his boot. “Fuckin’-A.”
Mürk fought to get away, the white line of his teeth showing.
Jaċken cupped Tonĩ’s cheek with his free hand. “I know it’s been one hell of a night, honey, but do you think I could ask you to get Skull’s ring off?”
“What?!” Mürk thrashed against Gábor’s hold. “No! Bugger off, you piggin’ grot!”
“I won’t let him hurt you,” Jaċken assured her.
Nodding mutely, she clutched the sheet tightly around her body and started forward.
Jaċken kept a steadying hand on her lower back as he led her to a spot in front of Mürk.
Mürk fought harder. “Get her away from me!”
Dev stepped forward and slammed a brutal fist into Mürk’s midsection.
As Mürk sagged against the garrote, Jaċken grabbed the Om Rău’s arm and forced it up, presenting his hand to Tonĩ.
She swallowed convulsively. “You’re going to have to pry open his fingers.”
“Oh, please,” Arc drawled nastily, “allow me.” He seized Mürk’s wrist and twisted sharply, breaking it with a brittle snap. Mürk’s hand flopped open.
Tonĩ quickly tugged his ring off.
Instantly, Mürk threw back his head and howled in pain.
Jaċken put his knife to the Om Rău’s throat, the point pressing against the man’s bulging Adam’s apple. “Don’t watch this,” he told her.
“Tonĩ, please!” Mürk begged, “don’t let him kill me! Please!” He struggled backward, his thick boots gouging up chunks of carpet. “For fuck’s sake, Tonĩ, I’m your brother!”
Chapter Forty-three
Jaċken rammed a clip into his M-16 rifle, then glanced at Nỵko, seated next to him on the passenger side of the Pathfinder. “You ready?”
Nỵko had an M-249 “SAW” machine gun propped between his legs, a huge motherfucking weapon for a huge motherfucking man, but as Nỵko peered down at it, he frowned forlornly. “I’m much better with knives, you know.”
Weren’t they all. The warriors had only, er, borrowed these U.S. military weapons from a shipment headed for the Marine Corps Base at Camp Pendleton for the rare times they required firepower. “I just need you to look like a sociopathic Godzilla, Nỵko. Point the damned thing at—” Movement in the rearview mirror snagged Jaċken’s attention. A black stretch limousine was pulling into the gloomy, underground parking garage. “They’re here.” He twisted around to glance at the men in the backseat. “You two ready to rock?”
Sedge blew a Bubble Gum bubble and lazily snapped it, his own M-16 cradled in his lap.
Dev had an M-4, a rifle similar to the M-16, but with a shorter barrel, gripped in his hands. His pointy smile spoke volumes.
Jaċken shifted his gaze to the man wedged between the protective muscle in the middle seat. “Roth?”
“Of course,” Roth replied. Only two words, but they cut like honed steel.
Yeah, he’d say so, then. Over Dev’s shoulder, Jaċken saw four men climb out of the limo. One was that trigger-happy mutt from the shoot-out at the Water Cliffs, black flames slithering up his jaw. The other three Jaċken had never seen before, but they were all black-haired, tall, beefy, and to a man looked like the types who strangled kittens and drowned puppies just for shits and giggles. One’s hair was cut into a viciously spiked mohawk—not that he needed help in the menacing department—another had a scar tugging his upper lip into a permanent sneer, and the fourth was sporting black flame tattoos up both arms from his elbows to underneath the short sleeves of his T-shirt. Scar Lip and Mohawk’s requisite black flames must lie elsewhere on their bodies, nowhere Jaċken had a need to see, thank you very fucking much.
They were armed for a damned street war, most with Uzis and Glocks; Scar Lip had an AK-47 assault rifle. An interesting amount of hardware to be carrying for a business deal that all parties had agreed would go down “non-violently” as an “act of good faith” between races.
Roth snorted softly. “It appears that nobody trusts anybody.”
Roth had that right. “Stay tight on your game,” Jaċken ordered his warriors, hopping out of the Pathfinder. “The shit could hit easily with these fuck nuggets.”
He prowled to the end of the car and took up a wide-legged stance across from the four Half-Rău, his M-16 held nose-down. Roth stood beside him, Sedge and Dev flanking the two of them a little behind.
They all waited.
The garage was silent as a tomb; no keys jangled, no engines cranked over, no footsteps echoed out. No one was around. Anything at all could go down here and the world would never know.
Scar Lip finally broke the silence. “Bring Mürk.” The two words s
liced cold and hard, edged with barely-suppressed violence.
“No,” Jaċken returned. “We have matters to settle first. Tell your leader to stop sucking down caviar and join the party.”
The limousine door swung open again and a well-polished shoe emerged, then a sleek pant-leg, and finally the rest of a man, tall, elegantly dressed. “Debonair,” chicks would call a guy like this, or “silver fox” with his thick, silver-blonde hair and steely cheekbones. Jaċken would call him a damned meteorite. The intensity of power coming off him filled the entire garage, an electrical current that surged and ebbed through Jaċken’s body as if electrodes had been attached to his ’nads and some kids were fooling around and rapidly turning the switch on and off.
Roth stiffened. Apparently, his ’nads weren’t having a jolly time, either.
Mr. Elegant headed across the garage, the heels of his dress shoes tapping sharply on the concrete floor. He came to a stop a few yards away, his blue eyes cold and piercing, his hands clasped loosely behind his back. “Raymond Parthen,” he introduced in a cultured accent. “I detest caviar, if the truth be known. Terribly fishy stuff.”
Hatred corroded Jaċken’s veins. He ached to squeeze the trigger of his M-16 and keep squeezing until this man was a sieve. The look on Tonĩ’s face in Spike Boy’s bedroom when she’d discovered that her father was head of the Topside Om Rău would be burned into his memory forever.
“Roth Mihnea,” Ţărână’s leader counter-introduced.
“Charmed. My son, Mürk?” Parthen inquired blandly.
Roth swept a fleck of dust from the sleeve of his blazer. “He’s here.”
“You’ll get him back,” Jaċken informed Parthen, “when you agree to what we want.”
“Which is?”
“Leave Tonĩ the hell alone. I don’t want you anywhere near her again. Ever. You got that? You’ve hurt her enough to last a lifetime.”
“Have I? My, what distressing news. And after I had my lads use pellets to save her the gore of all those killings, too. Tut. A wasted generosity. But here nor there….” Parthen flicked a careless hand through the air. “I need my daughter, gentlemen, regardless of your concerns.”
“And your douchebag son?”
“You’re welcome to keep him. But I daresay you’ll risk Mürk learning valuable information about your underground hole, Vârcolac, and for no discernible gain on your part. You see, my dear chaps, the moment I found Rën dead, I changed my entire operation. Murk no longer knows anything about my affairs.”
Jaċken curled his lip. “I just might have to shed a man-tear over your fatherly devotion.”
Parthen offered Jaċken a smile that didn’t defrost his eyes. “Shall we cease this palaver and make a mutually beneficial deal?”
Jaċken shrugged. “As long as nothing you have to say includes Tonĩ. I daresay I’ve already made my position clear on that.”
“Your position.” One golden brow arched upward. “Who are you, might I ask, to comport yourself with such authority on my daughter’s behalf?”
Jaċken tightened his grip on his M-16. Here comes the fun part. “Her husband.”
Parthen burst out laughing.
Jaċken had to fight like hell to keep blood from rushing into his face.
“You jest!” Parthen’s gaze made a contemptuous trip over Jaċken. “Dear Lord, has Tonĩ gone barking mad?”
Jaċken showed his teeth. “As father-in-laws go, you’re not exactly curling the hair on my balls, either.”
Parthen tugged on the cuffs of his dress shirt. “As uncouth as you appear, it would seem. It’s bloody fortunate that we shan’t be holding the positions for long, isn’t it?”
The comment was followed by a deep base note of electricity thrumming through Jaċken’s body. Something that might’ve been unnerving had Jaċken not been so caught up in despising this fucker.
“You see, my dear boy, I have long-term plans for my daughter, and those don’t include her dipping into the primordial ooze that’s clearly your gene pool for her offspring.”
Jaw clamped, Jaċken chinned at the four men by the limo. “And you think those shit-stains have better pedigrees? They’re Half-Rău, too, you dingus.”
“Half-Rău and half-Fey,” Parthen corrected. “Bred correctly, this brood of mine will have progeny with active enchantments. Hence the reason my son and daughter are so important to my endeavors. I realize that someone of your suspect intelligence might have difficulty understanding—”
“Yeah, I get it. With their royal bloodlines, Tonĩ and Alex’s children will be some of the most powerful.”
“Ah! There you go, old tosspot! You’re not as much of a gobbin as you appear.”
“And you’re obviously not as powerful as you appear.” Jaċken broke topside rules and let his fangs show in a smile. “Or else why the need for so much help?”
Parthen made a sweeping gesture with his hand. “It’s a mammoth task I’ve set myself, boy, requiring many bodies in a multitude of different places. I’m taking back everything, you see—land, money, governmental positions, power—regaining the supremacy us Fey folk used to have in this world many years ago, before the regulars came along and managed to snuff most of us.” He tilted his chin. “This is a bit of history you Vârcolac should be well familiar with, is it not? Indeed, our two races could join forces in this venture. In all truth, I’d never thought to include you Vârcolac in my plans. With your blood and sun weaknesses, you’re worthless creatures, but, after all, there’ll be a need for servants and lackeys in the new world order.”
Jaċken laughed darkly. What would this egomaniac say if he knew that a few shots of Fiinţă from a lowly Vârcolac could bring today’s Fey generation into their full enchantments. “Power lies where you least expect it, Parthen. I’d remember that if I were you.” Jaċken nodded toward the Pathfinder.
Nỵko stepped out into the open from the side of the car.
The four Om Rău across the garage shifted and stiffened, hands going knuckle-white on their weapons. It wasn’t so much the SAW they were reacting to, as Nỵko. In keeping with Jaċken’s request to just look like a sociopathic Godzilla, Nỵko had removed his shirt, exposing the full panorama of his body’s muscles and…artwork. Yeah, that pretty much did it.
Nỵko opened the Pathfinder’s rear hatch and hauled Mürk out by his shackles, plunking the man on his feet.
Parthen noticed his son’s arm cast at once; he stiffened, just barely, but it was enough.
Roth’s voice went flat and hard. “Before instigating a war with us, Mr. Parthen, it would be wise for you to note that we can get your rings off.”
More shifting from the four Om Rău, their collective tension like a blast of hot, dense air.
Parthen’s eyes turned so glacial, the blue of the irises became almost transparent. He chuckled, the sound equally wintry. “Do you have any notion who you’re toying with, lads?”
Sparks of pain shot down Jaċken’s arms and deep into the bones of his legs. He kept his face blank, though, knowing Parthen was checking for a reaction.
“I believe,” Roth said, sounding remarkably calm, considering he was probably undergoing an internal barbecue, too, “that you’re the one misjudging us.”
Parthen inclined his head. “It appears we are at an impasse. I shall leave peaceably now, Vârcolac. I’m a man of my word, and there shall be no violence today. But eventually”—he sighed, as if truly regretting what he had to say next—“I’ll have to destroy you. Surely you must realize that.” With a final, sideways glance at Mürk, he turned and strode back to his limousine.
Chapter Forty-four
SpongeBob SquarePants let out an inane giggle as the cartoon sea sponge made some equally inane remark about Krabby Patties. Jaċken turned his wrist where it rested on his wife’s shoulder and checked his watch. Five minutes into the show and he felt like his brains were melting out of his ears.
“We don’t have to keep watching this,” he told her. “I can ca
ll Raln and tell him to un-fuck the programming.”
“It’s mind-numbing.” Tonĩ shifted closer. She was cuddled up next to him on their living room couch, her legs curled under her. “I kind of need that right now.”
“Might I suggest football, then?” He peered down at his wife as she squirmed again, and frowned. “Do you need more pain meds?”
“Actually, yes.” She straightened off him. “Would you mind getting them?”
“Of course not.” He hopped up, grabbed the bottle of Motrin from the kitchen, then headed back into the living room. “You should’ve asked Dr. Jess for Vicodin or Percocet.”
“It’s just some bruises.”
Bruises that looked a helluva lot worse the day after receiving them from Spike Boy. May the fucker rot in Purgatory. Jaċken crouched down in front of his wife, and shook three pills out of the bottle into his palm. He twisted his mouth at her. “You know, you never used to look like this before you started hanging out with Vârcolac.” And now twice in less than a month.
“True.” She gave him one of those warm, wifely smiles that turned his soft spot into absolute goo. “At least I’m not bored.”
He set a hand on her knee. “Never again,” he said quietly. “You have my solemn vow on that, Tonĩ.”
“I know.” She moved some strands of hair off his brow with her fingertips. “I feel safe with you, Jaċken, don’t worry.”
“Good.” He hadn’t earned that, yet, he knew, but he would.
“What are you going to do about Mürk?”
He braced his forearms on his thighs. “Well, your dear old dad made a good point. Skull is pretty damned useless to us. No sense torturing him for information he doesn’t have, which leaves us stuck with either detaining him in one of our jail cells for the rest of his life or outright killing him.”
