Lori.
He’d been a virgin himself when they met. He’d just turned eighteen and was shipping out to boot camp. She’d been at the MEPS station, enlisting. It had been love at first sight, and even though he’d never truly hoped to meet her again, they’d ended up stationed at the same base. They’d dated for six months and then got married on a whim. He’d taken her virginity that night, slowly, gently. It had been an amazing experience for both of them.
And now he’d taken Gem’s virginity, ruthlessly, and hadn’t even given her an orgasm to show for it.
“Dammit, Gem,” he said wearily. “Why me? Why did you hold on so long and then give it up for me?”
She turned to him, tugging her skirt down with shaking hands. She didn’t look at him as she said, “I’ve been in love with you for years. Since I first saw you at Mercy General.”
Those days seemed so far away. He used to take injured Guardians to a doctor there, one who knew of the battle between The Aegis and demons. Gem had been an intern, and he’d never suspected she was a demon.
“I couldn’t bring myself to have sex with anyone else,” she continued, “even though I knew I had a snowball’s chance in Hades with you.” She sniffed and wiped a tear with the back of her hand. “I just … I just wanted to give you something pure. It’s all I have. Had. Everything else about me is tainted by demon blood. But I had that. And it’s always been yours.”
Ah, hell. His chest squeezed as if an invisible vise had wrapped around it. Shame made his skin crawl right off him. What was he supposed to say to that?
The ringing of his cell phone startled him, and he hated himself for his shaking hand as he pulled the phone from his pocket. “Go.”
“Ky, man, it’s Arik. I can’t get hold of Runa, and I’ve got some information that might be important. Do you know how to contact Shade?”
Kynan swore Arik choked on Shade’s name, which was no surprise if he knew his sister was mated to him. A demon. “I’ll do my best.” He hung up. Didn’t look at Gem as he said, “I have to go.”
He took off without looking back, proving he was the coward she’d said he was.
Awareness swirled around Runa, and with it came blackness so thick she wasn’t sure her eyes were open until she blinked several times.
“Runa. Lirsha. Wake up.”
Shade’s worry cut through the darkness. Lifting her head, she winced at the biting pain streaking along the back of her skull. She swallowed, an ineffective attempt to quell the nausea bubbling in her stomach. Where was she?
Orange light flickered at the edges of her vision as she sat up on the cold stone floor, the clank of the chains clamped around her ankles echoing around her. She squinted at the light. Candle flames? No, torches. Familiar. She sniffed the air, taking in the oppressive scents of blood, mold, feces, and terror.
Oh, God. She was in Roag’s dungeon again. Her stomach lurched, and she leaned over just in time to keep from puking in her lap. Her gut convulsed, emptying its contents in a hot wash. Through her ringing ears, she heard Shade repeating her name, his voice growing more concerned with every passing second.
The memory of her capture slammed into her like a freight train, and she wished she could just pass out again into blissful ignorance. She closed her eyes and considered curling up to do exactly that. She’d done it before, once when her father had gone on a drunken rampage. For three days she’d lain on the floor of her closet, her mind taking her somewhere far more pleasant, somewhere where she wasn’t aware of anything going on around her. Doctors had called it catatonia, and they’d eventually brought her out of it, but she’d never forgotten how easy it had been to go there.
How easy it would be to go there now.
“Runa, baby, stay with me.”
Shade knew. Knew what she was thinking, knew her weakness. He’d taken away the guilt that had plagued her for years, but he hadn’t taken away the girl she’d been. He kept saying she’d changed in the last year, that she’d grown stronger, but the fact that she wanted to curl up and give up proved how weak she still was.
“Runa.” Eidolon’s voice, a deep, commanding drawl, brought her up above the fog of self-pity. “Look at me.”
Still on her hands and knees, she swung her head around to him. Her vision had cleared, but that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. She’d thought she was in a cell similar to the one she and Shade had shared before, but this was worse.
They were in Roag’s dungeon, but they’d been imprisoned in the large outer chamber where Roag kept the torture instruments. She’d been chained to the wall, while Shade and his brothers had been stripped of clothing and crammed into individual cages. Shade pressed against the bars of the middle cage as though trying to get as close as possible to her, his body flickering in and out of solidity.
“Oh, Shade,” she whispered.
“Listen to me,” Eidolon said from his cage on Shade’s left. He was sitting against the back bars, arms resting casually on his knees as though he was lounging at home in front of the TV. “The more Shade worries about you, the faster his curse progresses. And if you die, his grief is going to finish him off. You need to hold on. Be strong.”
“She is strong,” Shade said. His dark gaze bored into her, going obsidian with intensity. “You are. You’ll get through this.”
Roag stepped out from the shadowed stairwell at the end of the chamber, followed by two burly, ram-headed demons. “And wouldn’t that be a good trick? Surviving this, I mean.” He swept forward in a fluid, dramatic swirl of black robes.
Wraith, who had been standing in the corner of his cage, head hanging and hair matted to his face with dried blood, hissed. Runa gasped. Wraith looked like, well, a demon. His expression was a mask of rage, his fangs the size of a tiger’s, and his eyes glowed like amber tossed in a fire. He was a mass of blood and bruises, far worse off than either Shade or Eidolon, and as Roag approached, Wraith went rabid. He attacked the bars, slamming repeatedly into them as though trying to break every bone in his body so he could squeeze between them. Shade tried to talk him down, but nothing worked.
“He’s so excitable,” Roag said casually. “Then again, I probably would be, too, if I’d been kept in a cage and tortured for twenty years.”
“You’ve got all of us together now,” Eidolon snapped as he shoved to his feet. “What is it you want?”
Behind Roag, the two hulking demons lit a fire in the hearth. “I have a list a mile long, brother. And it begins and ends with pain.” Roag smiled. “And that’s something you know a lot about, don’t you, E?”
Wraith stilled in his cage, head down, shoulders heaving, his gaze drilling into Roag.
“Shut up.” Eidolon rattled the bars of his cage. “Shut the hell up.”
“What? You don’t want poor little Wraith to know how you’ve suffered for him?”
“E …” Wraith’s low growl vibrated through Runa’s bones. Something bad, very bad was about to be revealed.
Roag turned to Wraith. “It was probably bad enough to learn that Shade gets off on torturing females. I imagine that knowing what the Vampire Council does to Eidolon once a month won’t sit well with you at all. Might even send you completely over the edge. You were never very stable.”
“You bastard,” Eidolon whispered. “I trusted you. I cared about you!”
Shade shrugged. “I never did. You always were an a**hole.”
Roag snapped something in another language at his minions, who jammed iron pokers into the fire they’d created, and Runa’s blood ran as cold as the Hudson in winter.
“You’ll get yours in a moment, Shade.” Roag moved closer to Wraith’s cage, but not too close, Runa noted. “You know how the Vampire Council leaves you alone? How you can kill and kill and they don’t do a damned thing about it? That’s because a long time ago, our dear, sweet brother Eidolon volunteered to take the punishment for you.”
Wraith went so pale Runa thought he might pass out. “No.”
“You piece of shit,” Eidolon muttered. “I’m going to take you apart with my bare hands.”
“Oh, you’ll be taking one of us apart, but that’ll come later,” Roag promised, not looking away from Wraith. “Now, little brother, do you know what the vamp punishment is for taking more than your quota of humans each month? Do you know that they spend hours brutalizing Eidolon? By the time they’re done, there isn’t an inch of him that hasn’t been bloodied. Here’s the fun part. It’s been going on for years. I’ve been making sure of it.”
Eidolon’s eyes shot wide open. “You. You’ve been shifting into Wraith’s form and doing the killing.”
“Wraith flaunts his kills enough to get you tortured without my help, but really, I just like killing humans.”
Wraith began to tremble, and his eyes had gone so haunted and so full of pain that Runa could practically feel his misery. “Why, E?” he croaked. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Roag laughed. “Idiot. They didn’t tell you because you’re a f**king weak little worm. I never did understand why they didn’t just let you die in that warehouse.”
“Don’t listen to him, Wraith,” Shade said, his voice a cold, hard command intended to grab Wraith’s attention and keep it. “E took the punishment because you’d been through enough already. We didn’t tell you for the same reason.”
“He hasn’t gone through nearly enough,” Roag said. “None of you have.” He snapped his fingers, and two more demons who must have crept down the stairs while Runa was engrossed in the conversation brought forward a pale female who walked like a zombie.
Which was, Runa realized with horror, because she was a zombie. Jesus, it was the female Runa had killed when she and Shade had escaped.