“You can’t do that.” Lore crossed his arms over his chest, still playing nonchalant. “I’m on a deadline.”
“Then you should have thought about that before you spirited away the female.”
A shiver of dread skittered up Lore’s spine. “Look,” he said calmly, even though inside he was sweating bullets, “I swear, as soon as I have Kynan’s head, I’ll submit myself for your punishment. Whatever you want.”
Deth’s steel-gloved fist nailed Lore in the jaw. Pain spiderwebbed up his face, into his skull, but he refused to show any reaction.
“You will not negotiate with me!” Deth roared. “I am going to punish you for taking the female. Right now.”
Lore snorted. “Pussy stuff.” Antagonizing Deth wasn’t the smartest move, but pain was coming no matter what, so Lore might as well get in a few jabs of his own.
This time, Deth’s blow struck him in the chest, those knuckle spikes puncturing, clawing like an eagle’s talons and snatching the breath right out of Lore’s lungs. Lore staggered back, but he managed a smile and a raspy, “Love the foreplay.”
Deth snarled, blasting Lore with his fetid breath. “Does Sin also love it?”
The demon wanted to see fear, but Lore would never give him that satisfaction. “Dunno. Probably.”
Deth got right in his face. Again with the rotten breath. “I cannot wait for you to fail your mission. I will make you watch as Sin is slaughtered. Her screams will be the music that fills this den for weeks.”
Lore’s skin grew tight, his muscles twitchy, and he was on the verge of erupting. A growl escaped as though through a relief valve. “I will kill you someday. I swear it.”
Deth laughed. Flickering flames from the fire in the hearth and torches on the walls played with the shadows on his face, twisting his expression into something even more hideous. “How many times have I heard that?” He shoved his fist into Lore’s gut and twisted so the spikes gored him viciously, ripping and tearing. “Now, will you bring the female to me?”
Pain wrenched through Lore, not all of it physical. He would never bring Idess here, and he would save Sin. Somehow, he’d protect them both.
“Fuck you,” he spat, even as he fought to stay on his feet.
Deth hissed, and the trapdoor beneath Lore gave way. After a twenty-foot drop, he made a bone-breaking landing on the wet, cold floor in the dungeon. A Nightlash female stood next to a wall of torture implements, smiling at Lore as if he were a gift.
Foreplay was over. It was time for the main event.
* * *
The sound of torture was like the sound of someone coughing during a movie. Rariel found both to be extremely irritating.
“Add an extra lash for me,” he said to Deth. Lore had seriously screwed up something Rariel would have paid to see; Idess as an assassin slave. “And make sure his life will not be endangered by this.”
Having Idess show up to protect Lore, now that he was Primori—and hadn’t that been a nasty surprise—would definitely be a bad thing. She couldn’t flash in here under normal circumstances, but Rariel didn’t want to test her ability to do so if her Primori was facing death. Though it might be worth it to see her forced into slavery as an assassin…
Deth gave an indignant snort. “My torturer is a master, trained in all arts and all species’ weaknesses. She would never accidentally kill one of her victims.”
Like Rariel hadn’t heard that before. “Just be careful. And I want his dagger. I have a special use for it.”
Deth signaled a sentry, who disappeared.
“You will have him healed after this is over?”
“I don’t like it,” Deth growled, “but since he is on a deadline for your contract, I’ll use my newly acquired Sem assassin to heal him.”
“Good.” Rariel smiled as the guard returned with Lore’s Gargantua-bone dagger.
Now, it was time to fulfill an obligation to Roag and ruin—and end—some innocent lives.
* * *
By the time Idess flashed into UG’s parking lot, she was in a full-blown panic. Lore had gotten away from her, and touching his heraldi didn’t flash her to him. Which meant he was in Sheoul. Probably being tortured. Or maybe hiding out from her down there.
At the back of an ambulance, Eidolon was loading a stretcher. When he saw her, he slammed the doors shut so hard they bounced open again. “Where is he?”
“I’m pretty sure he’s at the assassin den.”
“Pretty sure? Are you kidding me? You helped him escape, and now you’ve f**king lost him?”
“I just need help finding the den. Is Sin here?”
“Do I look like her keeper?” Eidolon dug his cell from his pocket and dialed. “Ky? Where are you? Yeah, okay. But you should know that Lore is unaccounted for—”
“He’s not unaccounted for,” Idess interrupted. “He’s at the den.” Being tortured.
Eidolon told Kynan to stay safe and flipped his phone closed. “Why can’t you find him? He’s your Primori, right? Shouldn’t you have some sort of line to him?”
“Yes, but if he’s in Sheoul, he’s invisible to me.”
“Is there any other way he’d be invisible?” When she didn’t answer, his tone plummeted right into Sheoul with Lore. “Idess?”
She huffed. “It’s possible that he could find someone to cast a shield spell on him. It’s why we don’t ever tell Primori what they are.” She’d only broken about a million rules by now, but sometimes you had to cheat to win.
Rami would slap her if he heard that particular thought. He’d always been about playing by the book. She’d always been more concerned with winning, and when it came down to a battle between good and evil, rules went out the window.
Eidolon’s curses blistered her ears.
“You know,” she snapped, “I wouldn’t force you to listen to a Bible reading, so I’d appreciate it if you’d show me the same courtesy and not curse me and my kind to hell.”
Eidolon glared, but at least he didn’t cuss at her anymore. “Idess,” he said with very forced calm, “I’ve had a really bad day, and I just watched a warg infant die of a disease I can’t cure. So excuse me if I’m a little on edge because you lost the brother I swore I’d keep from killing one of my best friends.”
“I get it,” she said softly. “And I’m sorry. I needed Lore to help me get into the Assassins’ Guild. If I can find out who hired him—”
“Did you?”
“Unfortunately, no. But I had a thought. Is it possible that all of this is about you instead of me or Kynan?”
“What, you think Lore was hired to kill Kynan just so my family would be torn apart?”
“Sounds a little thin, I realize. But it’s one heck of a coincidence. Do you have any enemies who might want that to happen?”
“We’re sex demons,” he said wryly. “We pissed off a lot of males before we took mates. And Wraith has made a career out of making enemies.”
That wasn’t very helpful. “Lore mentioned another brother. One who hired him to kill you.”
“Roag. He’s gone.”
“Gone? How?”
Eidolon shrugged. “Maluncoeur curse. He’s doomed to an invisible existence, starving, thirsty, in pain… nothing he doesn’t deserve.”
Idess shuddered. Talk about eternal torment. Wait… “He’s invisible? But he’s still around?”
“I guess. But he can’t hurt anyone.”
But he could still lurk. Watch anything going on around him. Oh… oh, no. “Is it possible he’s here?”
Eidolon’s shoulders bunched with tension. “We left him in Scotland, but he could have hitched rides in the Harrowgate with other demons.”
“I think…” She inhaled a ragged breath. “I think he did exactly that. You know how I can see spirits? I’ve also seen a figure who appears transparent to me. He’s sort of…”
“Burned?”
“Yes.”
“Roag.” Eidolon’s eyes went crimson, and he buried his fist in the side of the ambulance, leaving a grapefruit-sized dent. “Son of a bitch!”
“Eidolon!” She grabbed his arm, and when he would have snatched it away from her, she jerked him around. “I took the creature out of the hospital. He’s not here right now, unless he found a way back.”
He went as still as a lamp post. “Where did you take him?”
“Phillips Court… some sort of apartment and housing complex—”
“Shade’s old place. But why would he go there?” Eidolon was talking to himself rather than her, which was good, because she didn’t know the answer. She did feel incredibly guilty, however. Finally, he shook his head. “I’ll figure it out. You need to find Lore. I’ll find Shade.”
* * *
Sin so did not want to go back to the hospital. Her brothers were asses, and the whole place gave her the creeps.
The only positive thing that had happened lately was sex with Conall and outing him for making that bet. The two-sixty she’d gotten out of it would buy her a new pair of Fae-crafted stun darts.
Except… she wouldn’t need them, would she? She was almost done with Deth, and then she could… what?
Something splashed painfully in her stomach, as if a stone had been skipped across a lake of acid. She hadn’t thought that far ahead. Since the age of twenty, she’d never been free, unowned, and she had no idea what she was supposed to do with herself if she suddenly had no orders.
She stepped out of the Harrowgate and into the emergency department… and right into chaos. Shade and Eidolon were rolling around on the ground, throwing punches and, as far as she could tell, not holding anything back.
Conall and Luc were watching, each holding a handful of bills. Another bet. Wonder how I can get in on that one. Conall’s molten silver gaze locked with hers, and she took a sudden, hot breath. He was every woman’s fantasy, from his perfect body to his remarkable eyes to his dangerous masculinity. Nice girls would tremble before him, even as they entertained wicked, private fantasies. Bad girls would make those fantasies reality any time, anyplace.
Sin was a bad girl.
And her inner bad girl—well, her inner demon—was itching to do anything that might get in her brothers’ faces.
Fucking one of their paramedics might just be the ticket. Plus, as she’d already learned, sex with Conall wasn’t exactly a hardship.
The battle raged as she crunched all the delicious possibilities in her mind, until suddenly, Shade rolled away from Eidolon, clutching his stomach, his mouth open in a silent gasp. Sin instinctively stepped forward to help, and was surprised when Eidolon did the same. They’d been fighting as though they hated each other, were bloody and bruised, but the fear in Eidolon’s expression left no doubt that they were not enemies.
“Shade?” Eidolon was on his knees next to his brother, his dermoire glowing. “What is it? Dammit, Shade, talk to me!”
Shade shoved to his knees. “Fuck,” he breathed. “Runa. She’s… she’s… in trouble.” He struggled to his feet and lurched toward the Harrowgate. “E. Send Tay to my place. The house. Fucking hurry!”
Eidolon wasted no time in fishing his cell phone from his pocket as Shade disappeared into the gate.
Sin had no idea what had just happened, but a sinking feeling told her this was just the beginning of something horrible.
Eighteen
The female named Runa sprawled in a rapidly spreading pool of blood, Lore’s knife impaled in her gut. She’d tried shifting into a warg, but Rariel had been prepared, and he’d jabbed her in the neck with a silver pin.
Don’t kill her, Roag said. I want her to live. To suffer for the rest of her life, forever hearing her children’s screams and knowing they died in excruciating pain.
Rariel had to hand it to the demon—he was sneaky as shit, tricking Idess into flashing him to Shade’s old apartment. From there, he’d hoofed it over here and slipped inside when Runa opened the door.
Rariel kneeled next to her and adjusted the ski mask he wore to conceal his identity. The bitch had wrenched it askew in her struggles. “I’m going to kill your cubs now.”
He gently smoothed his knuckles over her face in an odd, impulsive need to comfort her despite what he was saying. He despised that about himself, the little glints of goodness that hadn’t yet been corrupted by the evil surrounding him. Fortunately, they didn’t last long or happen often.
“You’ll hear their cries,” he continued, “but you can do nothing about it. I’ll take one of them, and you will tell Shade that I will trade him for Kynan. If you don’t hand over the human within twenty-four hours… use your imagination.”
She let out an agonized cry and tried to claw her way toward the stairs. He admired her pluck, for all the good it would do her.
Leaving her to bleed, Rariel followed the sound of wailing babies. They were at the top of the stairs, three of them, in a nursery decorated in deep blues and greens. Though toys littered the floor and animal murals covered the walls, the room was in no way set up like a frilly human nursery. Still, from the two rocking chairs to the daybed where it was obvious one or both parents had lain with the infants, the room was a testament to the love Runa and Shade shared for their offspring.
Regret turned Rariel’s stomach inside out, but after a single, shaky breath, he got over himself and lifted the loudest child out of his crib.