Chapter 8
“I hope like hell you aren’t running away like a damned coward.”
Unbelievable. Figured that just as Stryke got his shit together and was on his way out, his brother would fuck everything up.
Cursing, Stryke swung around. “Fuck off, Blade.”
Man, it felt good to say that. For years, his conversations with Blade had been brief, tense, and just polite enough to keep from starting shit.
It was time to start shit.
“You are running, aren’t you?” Blade said, his black Italian leather dress boots hitting the concrete pavers like muffled gunshots. “Asshole. I even defended you the other day when Rade accused you of running away when we needed you the most. I argued. Said we pushed you away.” His snort of disgust made an angry puff of vapor in the cool night air. “But he was right. Here you are, doing what you do best.”
Stryke forced himself to stay calm, even though anger flowed through his veins like blood. Furious gold flecks simmered in Blade’s dark eyes, and Stryke wondered if his eyes reflected the same. He hoped not. Blade got even more pissed when he couldn’t bait Stryke.
“What I do best,” Stryke said evenly, “is develop weapons for people like you to fight demons.” He met Blade in the center of the courtyard and bared his teeth. “So, back the fuck off, brother.”
Blade tensed, the tendons in his neck practically pulsing with aggression. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You’d like it if I got out of your face so you didn’t have to look into a mirror and see the pain you’ve caused.”
The truth of that hit too close to home, and Stryke growled as he got in his brother’s grill and proved him wrong. They went nose-to-nose and chest-to-chest, with years of hurt filling every gap in the remaining space between them.
But the thing was, Blade wasn’t wrong. All the pain his family had gone through could be traced back to Stryke. As pissed off as he was, he knew he deserved every drop of Blade’s animosity.
Self-awareness was a hell of a thing. And damned inconvenient.
“What do you want, Blade?” Stryke asked, his voice rumbling and low with the effort it took to keep from decking his brother.
“I want you to acknowledge what you’ve done, and I want you to fix it.”
Fix it? Had Blade hit his head? “I can’t fix it , Blade. No one can. Chaos is dead.”
“No shit!” Blade yelled. “Fucking hell, Stryke.” Blade clapped his hands on his head and wheeled around, his body coiled with rage and frustration. “I’m not talking about Chaos!” He pivoted back around, his hands fisting at his sides. “I want you to fix what you did to our family. What you’ve done to Mom and Dad. And Crux.”
What Blade demanded was impossible. Sure, their mom and dad would probably like to see him more, but his presence would also bring back memories and misery. He couldn’t put his family through that.
I can’t put myself through that .
It was another ugly truth he wasn’t ready to analyze. He didn’t have the time nor the desire to open wounds and drain the poison. That would mean apologies and groveling and exploring his feelings. Fuck that. Venomous anger was a far less messy coping mechanism.
“I did what I had to do,” Stryke said. “And how am I supposed to fix it when any attempt to make peace ends with you being an asshole? I made an effort tonight, but I knew you wouldn’t make it easy. I’m not the problem here. You’re the one who hunted me down to rip me one.” He took a beat, gathering all the fury and pain that had been taking up storage space in his brain. It felt good to let the rage erupt to the surface in a volcanic blast of relief. “You think I wanted to deal with that tonight? You think I ever want to hear about how I fucked up this family, let alone every. Single. Time I see you? You think I need you blaming me for what happened to Chaos—?”
He hadn’t seen the blow coming. One moment, he was laying into his brother, and the next, he was tasting blood and hearing bells.
“You don’t get to say his name.” Blade popped another punch square in Stryke’s nose, and blood spurted onto his lips and chin. “Not until you stop hiding.”
Self-loathing wrenched through him because, yeah, he was hiding. He was avoiding and deflecting and trying to protect his family from the pain the very sight of him caused. He couldn’t be both the cause and the cure for the tension in the family. How could the pain caused by his presence be cured by being there more ?
The self-loathing expanded, redirecting Stryke’s anger at Blade onto himself, where it belonged. So, instead of breaking Blade’s jaw, he let his brother take out all his pain and fury on him.
A heavy right cross would have been so satisfying, though.
Stryke absorbed the next jab in the face. And the next. And when a particularly hard uppercut knocked him back against the wall and turned his vision double, he stood there, waiting for another. As many as it took for Blade to feel better and for Stryke to feel nothing.
Because feeling nothing was better than drowning in self-hatred.
Blood and sweat flowed down his face and neck in stinging rivulets that made wispy trails in the chilly night. Blow after blow, his vision grew fuzzier, maybe from the blood in his eyes, maybe from swelling, or maybe from a concussion. Whatever.
Finally, the hits stopped coming. The pain, however, remained.
“You done?” he rasped. “Or are you sending me to be with Chaos?”
He couldn’t tell if Blade was unsteady or if he was. And then Blade lunged at him. Stryke braced himself for a hit, but none came.
The piercing beep of a nearby service truck in reverse competed with their ragged breathing as they stared at each other. One beep, two…Stryke counted six before Blade spun away and stormed toward the building. The door slamming closed was perfectly timed with the last truck beep.
Stryke’s legs gave out, and he stumbled against the stone wall before sliding to the ground. Throwing his head back, he rested his arms on his knees, closed his eyes, and regretted everything about this day. This night.
This entire hellforsaken life.
Holy shit.
Cyan clapped her hand over her mouth, covering her stunned gasp.
She’d known Stryke was at odds with his brothers, but she didn’t know why, and she hadn’t thought it was that bad. But even through the glare of the party lights on the window and the shadows sprawling across the yard, the pain and anger pulsing between the two males had been blinding.
And that was before Blade gave Stryke a boxing ring facial.
Why hadn’t Stryke fought back?
He was hardly a coward. He went toe-to-toe with world leaders, demons, and angels regularly. And he hadn’t shrunk away from Blade. If anything, he’d met his brother’s blows with defiance. At first. But as the beating continued, his defiance became acceptance.
She also had questions about her reaction to the altercation.
She’d enjoyed the first punch. She might have even pumped her fist and muttered, “ Yes !” Someone finally had the balls to take the guy down a peg.
The second punch had even made her happy. Maybe not as much as the first one, but really, Stryke deserved it. Arrogant ass.
Then…she’d seen his eyes. She’d expected anger, a spark of fury to ignite a good, old-fashioned brawl between bros. The kind that would eventually get broken up by a family member. There was a scene like that in every movie about brothers.
And rage had been there. But alongside it, Stryke’s eyes were filled with what she could only describe as despair.
Blade hit him again.
Blood spewed from Stryke’s nose as his head snapped back. Her breath caught, strangling a “ no !” before it escaped her lips.
Music blared from the party, a song with a beat that perfectly matched the timing of Blade’s fist into Stryke’s face. One punch, a downward power strike, knocked Stryke off balance, his body swaying as he tried to re-square his stance.
Blade yelled something, but music drowned out his voice. She could only read Stryke’s expression as the words hit him harder than Blade’s fists. This wasn’t a fight. It was a beating.
Blade popped Stryke with a sharp uppercut. Stryke, already swaying on his feet, lost his balance and slammed backward into the wall, blood streaming from his nose and mouth.
Like a predator moving in for the kill, Blade rained blows down on his brother with relentless fury.
I’ve got to stop this .
The thought had barely formed when, finally, Blade took an unsteady step back. Chest heaving, he swayed on his feet, his shoulders hunched, blood dripping from his fist.
Stryke looked up, his head wobbling, a crooked, pained smile on his split, swollen lips. He said something that made Blade surge forward, fist high, poised to strike a devastating blow.
“No!”
As if Blade had heard her through the window, he stilled. Seconds passed, marked only by her pulse pounding in her ears. Finally, Blade stepped back and dropped his fist to his side. She thought she caught a brief glimpse of remorse in Blade’s expression before he shook his head, pivoted on his heel, and strode inside the building.
In the courtyard, Stryke slowly slid down the wall until his butt hit a paver. His arms seemed to weigh a ton as he flung them loosely across his knees and threw his head back, eyes closed. He didn’t appear to be aware that blood still streamed down his chin, disappearing under his black collar and staining his silk tie.
Well, he deserved it.
She turned away from the window but halted after two steps.
Dammit. She couldn’t leave him like that. And she doubted he’d appreciate it if she told Kynan or one of his parents to check on him. He definitely didn’t need some rando finding him, taking pics, and publishing them on social media or selling them to the tabloids.
Just five minutes ago, she might have been the one taking the pics and selling them. But at some point during that epic beatdown, she’d stopped enjoying the punishment he deserved for his role in her parents’ and Shanea’s deaths.
Maybe she should at least see if he wanted a Band-Aid.
Calling herself seven kinds of fleeshim — idiot in her species’ language—she slipped out into crisp night air that carried the savory aromas of a nearby restaurant and the faint hint of blood.
Stryke’s head rocked forward. He blinked. Cursed. “Cyan.” He dropped his head back against the wall. “What do you want?”
“I want to be inside at the party, but I saw what happened and felt obligated to see if you needed anything. Glass of water? Bandage? A doctor? You look like you could use some stitches. And facial reconstruction surgery.”
Because, yikes. She was pretty sure that left cheekbone shouldn’t be where it was, and if he didn’t have half a dozen orbital fractures, she’d eat a petri dish teeming with e. Coli.
“I need to be left alone.” His words were mushy, spoken between lacerated, swollen lips, but he somehow still managed to sound like an ungrateful asshole.
“Gladly.” She spun around, grinding her heel into the stone. “Have a nice evening.”
She started for the door, her shoes clacking loudly in the quiet night. What a jerk.
“Wait.”
Fuck that. Feeling like a fleeshim for trying to help, she picked up her pace.
“Cyan.”
Nope. She was almost to the door. He could sit there and rot.
“Please.” His tone was sharp and frustrated, and if not for the underlying note of sincerity, she’d have kept going.
Through the window, she saw people clapping and dancing to one of Grace Obert’s songs. Looked like fun. She could be in there, drinking champagne, maybe dancing with Parker, or, more likely, sipping bubbly in the familiar comfort of her lab by herself.
Or she could be out in the cold with a giant jackass.
Sighing, certain she was making a mistake, she swung back around to him. “What?”
He looked in her direction, but she wasn’t sure how well he could track her. His left eye had swollen to the size of a plum, so he was probably blind in that one. The other eye had fared better, but the nasty gash on his brow kept a steady stream of blood flowing into it. He attempted to wipe his face with his sleeve but mostly just smeared the blood around.
“Would you…?” He inhaled slowly, and she couldn’t tell whether he was pained by having to ask her for something or by bone fractures. The way he wrapped one arm around his chest said his ribs hurt as badly as his face. “Would you help me get home? I can’t see very well.”
Damn him. The thin thread of vulnerability in his voice cut through her annoyance. She glanced through the window again, once more weighing her options.
Finally, she shrugged. “You’re lucky I don’t like champagne that much.” She gestured to the party inside. “Is there anyone you want me to deliver goodbye messages to?”
His bitter laugh startled her. “No.”
He shoved to his feet in a smooth surge, but not without a pained grimace, and one hand braced on the stone wall. She hurried over before he fell on his ass.
“Come on,” she said, taking his arm. “It’s this way.”
The Harrowgate’s glittering opening dissolved into a dark entryway as they approached. She ushered him inside. Once the door closed, the pitch-black walls lit up with two symbols, one representing Sheoul and the other the human realm. She tapped the human-realm symbol, and a giant world map spread in glowing lines on all the walls. She was just reaching to tap on the continent of Australia when Stryke’s hand clamped down on her wrist.
“We’re going to Canada, not StryTech. You’ll need to use the keypad.”
Well, that was unexpected. She pressed her fingertip to the map of Canada and then tapped the symbol to the right of the glowing country. Instantly, dozens of symbols popped up next to the map.
“The code is in Sheoulic. Numbers inje, vilam, olshek . You’ll need my thumb.”
She shot him a surprised glance. “So, someone with the code could chop off your thumb and get access to…wherever we’re going?”
“A pulse in the thumb is required.”
“Good thinking.”
She brought up the Sheoulic language box, entered the code, then took his hand and guided his thumb to the indicated glowing circle. She also took note of the coding in the system—a complex, secure language she’d never seen but figured she could break if she tried hard enough.
Instantly, the gate opened onto the deck of a house nestled in snowy trees as far as she could see into the darkness.
“Wow,” she said as she guided him out, his hand still in hers. “I thought you lived at the top of StryTech tower. Where are we?”
“My cabin. The penthouse suite at the top of StryTech is all for show, parties, and interviews.”
A blast of icy air made her shiver as they made their way across the deck toward the sliding glass door. “Why am I not surprised?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She stepped carefully onto the icy planks. “Supervillains always have secret lairs.”
He let out a sound somewhere between a cough and a laugh. “You see me as a villain?”
“You think that’s funny?”
“I do.” He waved his hand blindly in front of an electronic pad until he finally got it right, and the device beeped and unlocked the door. “But I might have a concussion.”
She paused before crossing the threshold. “Maybe I should go back and get Eidolon. I saw him at the party—”
“Absolutely not,” he said, slurring the words. “I heal quickly. Just get me to the couch.”
“Please.”
“What?”
She shook her head in dismay. “How did a polite, sweet woman like Runa raise you? Is it so difficult to say, ‘Please get me to the couch?’”
“Please get me to the couch.”
She tugged him inside. “I’ll accept that because I’m cold, but the sarcasm was a little over the top.”
He might have smiled at that, but it was hard to tell because of all the swelling and bruises. But he was right about healing quickly. By the time they crossed the entryway’s hardwood floor and made it to the living room throw rug, his gait was steadier, and he was standing straighter. Once they got to the sofa, he sank down with a hiss and a wince, then reclined on the buttery, toffee-colored leather with a contented sigh.
She gave the place a cursory glance, noting the rustic cabin decor but very modern conveniences, like the enormous kitchen with professional appliances that didn’t look like they’d ever been used.
“I’ll get a washcloth and some ice,” she said. “Stay here.”
“You don’t have to do that. Go back to the party.”
“It’s no problem.” She headed for the kitchen, her feet sinking into the plush ivory rug. How did he keep it so clean? “I’ll just be a moment.”
“I said, go back to the party.”
Gods, he sounded so much like her ex sometimes. Defensive, angry, broody. There was a reason she’d dumped the technomancer from DART’s Paris office, and she’d learned her lesson. She’d put up with Jeth’s shit because she’d been stupid enough to love him.
But she didn’t love Stryke. So, fuck him.
She wheeled back around. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
She expected him to be angry and fly off the handle like Jeth had if she pressed an issue instead of backing down or walking away. So, her jaw nearly fell open when he chuckled darkly.
“What’s wrong with me? I’m a closed-off, self-absorbed asshole who pushes everyone away.”
That was unexpectedly candid. “So, you don’t deny that you’re a jerk?”
He shrugged. “It’s no secret, Cyan. People tell me. I hear it from Masumi all the time.”
Masumi? She’d heard Blade and Mace mention the name before. She’d assumed Masumi was a shared girlfriend or something. You never knew when it came to incubi.
“Is she your counselor? Shrink?”
“No.” He paused. Shrugged again. “Maybe. Sometimes.”
Well, that cleared things up. “So, if you know you’re a jerk, why don’t you just, you know, stop being one?”
He sat up, winced, and flopped back again. “You’re confusing knowing I’m a jerk with caring that I’m a jerk.”
She stared, unable to believe what she was hearing. “How can you be as smart as you are and not understand that being nice to people gets you more?”
“Really?” he asked, returning her stare. “And what more do I need? I have more money than God, and I’m not sure it’s possible to acquire more power than I already have.”
His honesty both impressed and infuriated her. “So, you feel justified mistreating people just because you don’t need anything?”
“How do I mistreat anyone? My employees are happy. They might not like me, but they respect me. They’re paid well and get better benefits than anyone in the human world.”
“Okay, maybe mistreat was the wrong word. How about rude? Cold? Dismissive?”
“It works for me, Cyan. Why does everyone feel the need to be liked? I don’t care. Does that make me a sociopath? I’ve been called one, but I think that label fits Rade better.” He paused. “Can demons really be called sociopaths? If sociopathy is a feature of our kind and not a disorder?” He tapped his comms. A holoscreen popped up, and his fingers flew over the controls.
“What are you doing?”
“Notes,” he said absently. “I’m taking notes.”
“Right. Of course, you are.” Gods, he was weird. And she had a pretty high tolerance for eccentricity. He ignored her, so engrossed in what he was doing that she no longer existed to him. That champagne sounded good again. “Well, if everything’s okay, I’m just going to…”
She started to turn away, but a crash spun her back around in time to see Stryke hit the floor. Face pale, teeth clenched in agony, he writhed on the rug, his arms wrapped around his abdomen.
“Stryke!” She scrambled over and kneeled next to him. “What is it?”
His hand clamped down on her arm, his damp palm burning her skin. “Need,” he gasped. “Came on…too…fast.”
Need? What did he need? Her head felt fuzzy as tingling heat radiated out from where he touched her. Streaks of pleasure seemed to race from their point of contact through her nervous system. Her muscles loosened, and her breasts tightened. Lower, her sex pulsed, and her panties grew damp. What the ever-loving hell was going on?
Arousal pumped through her, and the same thing must have been happening to Stryke because his gaze had gone liquid gold, drawing her into its swirling, hypnotic depths.
“What…what is happening?” she whispered as she lowered her face to his, her body stretching against his hard form.
“Need…” He arched against her, driving the hard bulge between his legs into her belly. “Injection.” He wrenched away from her. “Bedroom…bathroom. Counter. Hurry.”
She blinked, dazed until he snapped at her again.
“Hurry!”
Snapping out of it, she kicked off her shoes and hurried into the kitchen. There was a half bath just off it, a door to a dark stairwell, and a sliding door that opened to a glass-enclosed dome with a luxurious pool. She only took a second to gaze at the snow surrounding it like a reverse snow globe. A couple of lounge chairs and a table sat at the near end of the modest-sized pool, and another door led outside to a covered hot tub. She could picture him out there, naked, arms thrown up onto the sides of the tub, relaxing with one of the superhot females he was often pictured with in the tabloids…
Ugh, that was enough.
She found his bedroom opposite a home gym people would pay a mint to use. Who needed three different treadmills?
Or a bedroom the size of her apartment?
“Cyan!” Stryke’s pained shout kept her from gawking.
She hurried into the bathroom—also huge. Just inside the door, a marble basket sat on the counter, filled with neatly stacked syringes, each containing 3 CCs of a reddish liquid. Assuming those were what he’d been talking about, she grabbed one and jogged back.
As she rounded the corner to the living room, she came to a shocked halt.
Welp. There’s the superhot female from the hot tub.
A naked female straddled his thighs, her hands scrambling at his waistband. Stryke captured her wrists and shoved her away.
“I said no.”
“You idiot!” Sitting back on his legs, she flung her arm toward Cyan in a furious gesture. “You have two females right here, ready to fuck you, and you choose a needle?”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Confused for so many reasons, Cyan held up her hands, the syringe dangling from her fingers. “I’m not ready to fuck him. Not even close. There will be no fucking.” She paused. “Who are you, anyway?” She glanced over at the sliding glass door but saw no new tracks in the snow outside. “And where did you come from?”
The female jammed her hands onto her hips and stared down at Stryke. “Are you going to tell her?”
Ignoring the stunningly gorgeous, dark-haired, chestnut-skinned female with the mysterious accent riding his hips, Stryke thrust his hand out to Cyan. “Give me…” He took a couple of panting breaths. “The syringe.”
Cyan folded her arms across her chest, keeping the syringe well out of his reach. “Not until you tell me what the hell is going on.”
“Ha!” The female grinned, her emerald nose piercing glittering in the light from the antler pendant overhead. “I like her. Now, tell her.”
He snarled like a feral animal and tossed the female off him. She rolled and came to her feet in a catlike surge as he sat up and braced himself against the couch.
“Cyan, this is Masumi.” He hissed in pain, and when he spoke next, it was between clenched teeth and through shallow breaths. “She lives in that vase. She’s a succubus species created specifically to service Seminus demons.”
“Excuse me?” Cyan recoiled in horror. “She was created to screw you?”
“Not me. Not specifically.” He rolled his eyes at what must have been an expression of disgust on her face. Yes, Cyan was a demon with murky moral boundaries, but she’d grown up in the human realm, and the idea that any female had been bred to please males made her sick. “Yeah, yeah, it’s horrible, but what are you gonna do?” He wrapped his arm around his midsection and groaned. “We need sex, or we’ll die. She needs sex with us , or she’ll die. Sex with her species even gives us a couple of extra hours of relief versus any other. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement.”
Okay, but still. Infuriating. “So, Masumi lives with you? Or with Mace and Blade? I’ve heard them talking about her.”
Masumi snagged a pink satin robe from the arm of one of the leather recliners and slipped it on. “My other vase is in Stryke’s old compound, where his brothers and some cousins live.”
“You live in a vase? Do you travel between them, or do you exist in two vases at once?”
“Both at once,” she said. “Stryke calls it an extradimensional, um, spheroid.”
“ Inter dimensional. And still wrong.” Grimacing, he made an impatient give-me gesture at Cyan.
“No. You’ve explained precisely nothing.” Cyan held up the syringe. “What is this for? And if you need sex, why aren’t you having it with the succubus?”
“Those are good questions, Cyan.” Masumi slid a meaningful look at Stryke.
“Just”—Stryke doubled over and moaned—“give me the shot.”
“Stubborn fool.” Masumi swiped the syringe from Cyan, uncapped it with her teeth, and plunged it so deeply into Stryke’s thigh that he shouted.
Ouch. “That was a little overkill, don’t you think?” Amusing, but still overkill, given that Stryke was clearly already injured.
“No.” Masumi tugged her robe tightly around her. “He can choose to have sex, or he can take an injection that mimics the effects of sex. It gives him the lifesaving boost of chemicals without having to stick his dick in a female.” She tossed the empty syringe onto his lap as he rested, slumped against the couch cushions. “Good night, Master .”
He cursed softly as she strode away, her body disintegrating into a pulsing, shiny fluid that slid inside the vase.
That was some crazy shit.
Stryke cleared his throat. His color was better now, and some of the swelling in his face had even gone down.
“Does sex—and whatever was in that syringe—help you heal?”
“In a way,” he said, sounding stronger. “The longer we go without an injection or an orgasm, the weaker we get, and the more our immune systems slow down. Once we get what we need, it boosts our bodies’ healing ability.” He pushed himself up off the floor and stood, steadier on his feet than she would have expected. “Thank you for helping me home. You can go now.”
“Wow. Talk about whiplash. You couldn’t have said that in any nicer way, huh? Didn’t we go through this already?”
“Go now, please .” He moved toward the liquor cabinet. “Better?”
She ignored his order and his sarcasm. “Why aren’t you making use of a succubus who is willing to help you?”
“Why aren’t you leaving?”
He had a point. She’d done her good deed for the day, and there was no reason to waste the rest of it with an ungrateful asshole.
“You know what? That’s a good question.” She pivoted toward the door but came to a stop when she saw that the entire front wall was one giant whiteboard. Equations in black and red covered it like graffiti. She was proficient in higher math and mechanics, but whatever he’d done on that board looked absolutely alien, and despite her annoyance, she wanted to smile.
He’d come to her college to speak once and had brought a portable whiteboard, which he’d used to explain why gravity differed in various locations inside Sheoul. She hadn’t paid attention at all. No, at that time, all she’d seen was a handsome, confident, smiling twenty-one-year-old male who had been passionate about science. His confidence flirted with arrogance, which she’d found to be a bit of a turn-on. He’d filled her mind with inspiration, and her body with heat. She’d fantasized about him for years after that.
Not anymore. He was much more likable from afar. Like, in her distant memories.
“You’re still here,” he pointed out in a bored drawl as if she was just. So. Tiresome.
“Fuck you. No, wait.” She wheeled back around. “I take that back. No fuck you . I wouldn’t fuck you if you were dying, were the last man on Earth, and all the dildos were gone.”
Practically spitting with fury, she stormed out. Shanea would have said she’d flounced.
Shanea .
Yet one more reason for her to despise Stryke. She just hoped he hated her as much as she did him. Nothing would make her happier than knowing she got on his nerves. No, wait. Right now, champagne would make her happy.
Enough to make her forget she’d ever tried to be nice to a self-avowed jerk.