“I’m guessing that when he looked normal, with the blond hair, he was impersonating one of your other brothers? Wraith, right?”
“Yeah.” He glanced over at Runa, wondering how she was handling all this, but man, she was a trouper, sitting there all calm and cool when Shade just wanted to go as batshit loco as Roag.
“Is … is there anything I can do?” she said softly.
“Only if you can bring back my sister.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He risked another glance at her. “I thought you hated me.”
Her head snapped back as though he’d slapped her. “I would never wish this on you.” She looked down at her hands, which were folded in her lap. “I know what it’s like to love a sibling.”
Shame shrank his skin. He remembered her brother, her devotion to him, her misery as she watched him waste away. They’d been close—she’d told Shade how her brother had been awarded custody of her when she was sixteen, after their father disappeared and their mother had been hospitalized. Arik had protected her as a brother should.
As Shade should have protected Skulk.
“How is Arik?” he asked, needing something—anything—to keep from screaming.
“He’s great.” She slid him a sidelong glance. “Thanks to you.”
Shade cranked his head around. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You healed him.” She searched his face, but he didn’t know what she was looking for. “I know you did.”
“I didn’t—”
“Don’t. I know it was you. Arik was dying, and then you came over … and after you left, his condition began to improve.”
Shade sighed. Three days before Runa found him with the two females, he’d gone to her house, an older two-story in New Rochelle, to drop off the jacket she’d left at his place. He’d also planned to make a clean break from her. He’d sensed her growing attachment, her need for more than he could give. The moment he walked through the door, the rank stench of death had assaulted him. Runa had been on the phone, so he’d wandered through the house until he found the master bedroom, where her brother had been lying in bed, a living skeleton.
“He was suffering from a demon-inflicted disease,” Shade said, when her stare made it clear that she wasn’t going to let this drop.
“What did you do?”
“Shit.” He scrubbed his hand over his face. He hadn’t wanted her to know any of this. He hadn’t wanted her to feel grateful or that she owed him. The last thing he needed was for her to harbor any kind of tender feelings toward him.
“Shade? How did you cure him?”
A scuffle broke out in a nearby cell, followed by obscenities, a few barks of pain, and then things settled down. The silence, with the exception of the nerve-wrackingly incessant dripping noise, was enough incentive to keep Shade talking. Anything was better than listening to the sound of his own thoughts.
“I have the ability to affect bodily functions. The primary purpose of my incubus gift is to force a female into ovulation, but I can also enter the body at a cellular level, reverse some diseases.” He shrugged. “Your brother’s disease was an easy fix, actually.”
“The doctors were amazed,” she murmured. “I took him to the hospital the next morning. He walked in on his own two feet for the first time in months.”
“Happy to hear it.”
“Thank you.”
And there was the gratitude he’d been hoping to avoid. “Don’t thank me. I did it for purely selfish reasons,” he growled.
“How can saving a life be selfish?”
He forced himself to meet her gaze with as much malice as he could muster. “I didn’t figure you’d give it up if you were grieving over his death.”
She gasped, and he felt a twinge of guilt for lying to her. He’d saved Arik because that’s what he did. He was a paramedic, and even though the guy was human, he’d been suffering.
“You’re a bastard.”
“Yep.”
He winced as he made himself more comfortable—hard to do after Runa’s bite and the torture he’d been subjected to. Abruptly, he felt like a piece of shit for wincing at his discomfort, given what Skulk had probably gone through.
“So how did you survive the warg attack?” he asked. “How did it happen?”
She remained quiet for a moment, as though the silent treatment was a punishment, and he supposed in a way it was. “It happened the night I went to your place and found you with those … whores. I ran out, wasn’t paying attention to anything going on around me, and the werewolf attacked me.” She flinched so violently Shade swore to kill the warg if he ever caught him. “He tossed me behind a Dumpster when he was done. I don’t know how long I lay there, but I did manage to find my cell and call my brother. He came for me. Took me to the hospital. The doctors wanted to keep me for a couple of days, but Arik checked me out against medical advice the next evening. I didn’t know why, but I trusted him.”
“He knew you’d been bitten by a warg.”
“Yes. He didn’t tell me that, though. He took me home and locked me in the wine cellar. I thought he’d lost his mind. The next morning, when I woke up in the destroyed cellar, he explained.”
Shade shifted forward, his aches momentarily forgotten. “How did he know? And how did he contract a demon virus?”
She jerked her gaze away, and he wished they were closer so he could force her to look at him. Then again, it was probably best if they didn’t touch. He had too many memories of how good she felt under his palm. Under his body.
“Runa?” When she didn’t answer, he tested the limits of his chains. “Dammit, he’s Aegis, isn’t he?”
She shook her head.
“Military?”
Her gaze snapped to his, eyes flashing with surprise.
“What? You think demons aren’t aware that governments all over the world are working on the great underworld scourge?” He scrubbed his hand over his face. He was so freaking tired. “I don’t suppose we can count on the military swooping down to save us?”
She just stared.
“Didn’t think so.” He blew out a long breath. “Wraith might be a no-show, too. Looks like we’ll have to save ourselves.”
“How?”
“That,” he said grimly, “is the question of the day.”
“The problem with having evil minions is that minions are stupid.” Roag looked down at a slimy little drekevac that looked like a deformed, hairless ape, cowering at his feet.
“But I brought you the Seminus demon, one of the brothers you asked for.” The drekevac whimpered, his spindly fingers stroking Roag’s boots.
“And torturing him with an unfinished blowjob and the death of his beloved sister was amusing, but ultimately, Shade is useless to me. He’s cursed. Which means his body parts could be cursed. I need Wraith.”
Eidolon would do in a pinch, but Roag had already set him up for a lifetime of torment. Logical, loyal Doc E was being tortured once a month by vampires who would eventually maim or kill him. Besides, he’d need E’s surgical and healing skills to carry out his plan. Since Shade was useless, that left Wraith. Which was bloody fine, because he was the one Roag wanted to suffer the most anyway.
Poor little Wraith, so broken and tormented, so sheltered by his idiot, clueless brothers. Fools. Roag had seen through Wraith from the beginning. His youngest brother was a waste of good organs, but Roag planned to remedy that.
“Once again, you fail me.” He kicked the drekevac so hard it flew across the ancient keep’s great hall and slammed into a trestle table. As it scrambled toward him again, Roag morphed into Wraith’s form, reveling in the transformation that made his stiff, scarred skin turn soft and supple. “Since you obviously need a reminder, this is what he looks like.” And what Roag would look like once he’d harvested Wraith’s skin and reproductive parts.
“Lover?”
He wheeled around, thanking the Great Satan that he’d changed form before Sheryen entered the room. The Bathag demon had never seen him in his true form, and if he had his way, she never would. He needed Wraith, and he needed him soon. Eventually, Sheryen would grow resistant to the mind-sex and would realize that despite all her memories and orgasms, they had never once had intercourse.
“What is it, Sher?”
“I see you have a Seminus in the dungeon. I want to take him out to play.”
Jealousy nearly unhinged him. “You are to stay out of the dungeon, lirsha. How many times have I told you that?”
Her pretty pout made him grind his teeth in frustration. He still experienced the same urges he’d always had, but thanks to the loss of his sexual organs in the Brimstone fire, he could do nothing about them. It was a torture of the worst kind, being aroused but unable to f**k. He’d given Shade a taste of that earlier, when he’d set Solice to work on him, but clearly, she’d not worked him up enough, because he’d come down from his arousal rather than suffering to the point of death. The plan had been to let Shade agonize for hours, until he was nearly dead, and then send Solice back in, give Shade the release he needed … and start the cycle all over again.
A few moments of pleasure, punctuated by several hours of agony. Over and over. Beautiful.
And all ruined because Solice sucked dick as poorly as she performed surgery to remove the body parts from the demons his Ghouls captured. Which was why he needed Eidolon. Finding good medical help was even more difficult than finding good minions.
“Hmph.” Sheryen tossed her long, silver hair over her shoulder. “Then I’m going to Eternal. Care to join me?”
Damn her. She knew he wouldn’t go to any kind of club, let alone a vampire bar. The very idea made him break out in a cold sweat. “I’ll see you tonight in our lair.”