Chapter 2 #2
Mace put his money on Blade. Sabre’s taste in music ran a lot less annoying. And yep, the metal frame around Blade’s doorway, painted in the red and black of his favorite football club, rattled with every beat. Just like Mace’s bones and teeth. What the ever-loving hell—
“Mace!”
Startled, he wheeled around, cocked and locked, ready to kick some ass. Then he felt like an idiot when he saw Crux, hunched over in the hall, his hands covering his ears. His bed-mussed, tawny hair stuck up in matted tufts, and he was wearing baggy sweats, his face pale and contorted in pain.
“Are you going in there? Tell Blade to turn down his music. My head’s killing me.”
Mace dropped his fists to his sides. “Still? Didn’t you go to bed early last night because your head hurt?”
“Yeah.”
Crux winced at a series of deep, booming drumbeats, somehow losing even more color. He now had the corpselike pallor of an obhirrat’s maggoty insides.
Mace threw a gentle arm around his cousin’s bony shoulders and guided him toward his room. “Go back to bed. I’ll handle this.”
With a weak nod, Crux ambled through his doorway.
Poor kid. Mace remembered the hellish weeks leading up to his transition, thinking things couldn’t possibly get worse.
They had. Much, much worse. And any day now, the first of two maturation processes would begin for Crux, and his world would become a tsunami of misery.
Boom. Boom. Boomfuckingboom!
Mace pounded on Blade’s door. “Yo, Blade!”
No answer. No surprise, either.
Mace threw open the door.
Blade’s apartment was dark, illuminated only by the weak, rainy-day-afternoon light from the windows overlooking the backyard. His shadowy form blocked the kitchen window, where he stood motionless, palms braced on the counter, his gaze focused on something—or nothing—on the tennis court below.
Mace thumped his fist into the sound system controls on the wall. Silence. Blessed silence.
Startled, Blade tore himself away from the window, rounding on him with an angry curse. “Mace. What the hell? What do you want?”
“Peace and quiet would be nice.”
“You could have just lowered the volume.”
Mace shrugged. “Could’ve but didn’t want to.”
He glanced around at the living room, decorated in rich browns and mahogany, his cousin’s leather furniture draped with a cream afghan that his mother made to “brighten up the place.” Also brightening up—and cooling down—the place was a gleaming blue coffee table of non-melting ice, crafted by demons from Sheoul’s Frigidoom region.
Masumi’s ornate jade vase sat on top of it, and since the bathroom door was closed, Mace assumed she was inside. Nothing unusual about any of that.
But…Blade had tossed his battle gear across the back of the sofa instead of hanging it on the rack on the wall. The guy was a neat freak—more like Stryke than he’d ever admit—so yeah, something was up.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing.” Blade strode over to the bar and poured a shot of whiskey. The good shit from a demon-run distillery that produced spirits formulated to give Seminus demons a good buzz. Regular alcohol didn’t usually affect them at all.
“Bullshit. You don’t blast music and get all moody for no reason.” This had family trouble written all over it. Mace got that. He had a dickhead of a brother, too, but the animosity between them was nothing even close to what Blade had going on with Stryke. “What did Stryke do now?”
Stryke had been estranged from the family for years, but Blade’s relationship with him had been especially strained.
Now, Stryke was back in their lives, and Blade was tolerating it about as well as a vampire tolerated holy water.
Even his choice of alcohol was a statement.
The whiskey was from one of the very few distilleries unaffiliated with Stryke’s StryTech empire.
“Fuck Stryke.” Blade threw back the shot of whiskey.
His personal symbol, a sword broken in half, writhed angrily beneath his jaw as he swallowed.
Heck, his entire dermoire, a paternal history of glyphs that ran down every Seminus demon’s right arm all the way to the fingers, seemed to thrash in irritation.
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
The bathroom door swung open, and Masumi stepped out, wearing high-heeled combat boots, a naughty smile, and nothing else.
Mace stared, unable to drag his eyes away…
but not because she was nude. He’d seen her naked a thousand times.
Hell, she was naked more often than not.
What struck him now was that Masumi, a succubus who usually sported lush black hair, deep-tan skin, and dark eyes, had assumed Scotty’s red hair, milky skin, and hazel-green eyes.
She’d even gotten Scotty’s freckles right.
Mace knew, because he’d memorized them. The ones on her left cheek that looked like Yoda were his favorite.
“Both of you tonight?” she asked, anticipation turning her low, sultry voice even huskier.
Blade gestured at the door with his shot glass. “Mace was just leaving.”
“Mace was not just leaving.” He folded his arms stubbornly across his chest. He wasn’t going anywhere now that he knew what—or who—was behind Blade’s shitty music and shittier attitude.
Masumi’s glossy red lips puckered in a sassy pout. “I see. Summon me when you’re ready, Blade.” An instant later, her body morphed into a stream of pearlescent liquid that arched high before pouring itself into the jade vase.
Mace never got tired of watching that. And he’d never not be grateful to Stryke for freeing her from her cruel master. Now, they had to find a way to free her completely. Until then, though, their mutually beneficial arrangement kept her—and the males in the house—alive.
When you were a species of demon that would die without sex, agreements like that were game changers.
“So.” Mace turned back to Blade. “How long have you been fucking Masumi while she looks like Scotty?”
Blade’s cheeks went slapped-ass crimson. “She doesn’t look like Scotty.”
“You’ve always been a shitty liar.”
“What?” Blade shot back, temper jacked up at being called out. “You telling me she’s never worn red hair for you?”
“Sure, she has.” Masumi’s ability to sense her summoner’s moods allowed her to tailor her appearance to the situation every time. Last week, he’d needed a pick-me-up, and she’d given him a hot sci-fi fantasy by doing herself up as a green-skinned, short-haired Orion from Star Trek.
Blade turned back to the alcohol. “Then shut the fuck up.”
As if. Shutting up wasn’t a trait Mace was known for. “Do you have a thing for her?” The question came out like a demand, but Blade didn’t seem to notice.
“For Masumi?” He set his empty shot glass on the counter and reached for the whiskey bottle again.
“Don’t play dumb.” Mace crossed the room, wishing that, for once in his life, he could let shit go instead of confronting it head-on. “I’m talking about Scotty, and you know it.”
“We made a pact, Mace.” Blade opened the bottle and started pouring.
“A pact only keeps us from sleeping with her.” Mace slapped his hand down on the table. “It doesn’t keep us from wanting her.”
“Do you want her?” Blade asked, his tone defensive, his pour paused.
Mace shifted uncomfortably. This wasn’t a topic he allowed himself to ponder.
Sure, if they hadn’t made that pact, he’d have gotten Scotty into his bed years ago.
But they had made the pact, and his respect for their friendship kept him from so much as even thinking about being with Scotty.
He couldn’t think about it. Couldn’t picture her naked or fantasize about watching her come.
If he ever allowed himself to do any of that, he wouldn’t stop.
He’d want her with a fierceness that would destroy him and everyone around them.
So, he ruthlessly suppressed all inappropriate thoughts.
“No,” he said, with as much honesty as he believed himself capable of. “Do you?”
Please say no.
“Hell, no. No way.” Blade practically threw the bottle onto the counter. “But Scotty—” He cursed and jammed his hand through his dark hair. “She’s making a mistake.”
“Because she wants to lose her virginity to some rando?” The very idea made Mace want to strangle someone. “I don’t see any way to stop her.”
“We can talk to her. Convince her to wait until she finds a guy she wants to be with.”
That would almost be worse. A one-night stand was one thing. A lover, a potential mate, even…fuck, the very idea gave him hives.
Selfish piece of shit.
Yup, that was him. He had to either inject himself with a sexual suppressant or have sex all the time, but dammit, he didn’t want Scotty to be with a male.
To his credit, that attitude was a recent thing.
Before the incident on Stryke’s oil rig a couple of months ago, he hadn’t given a hellrat’s ass who she dated.
Well, mostly. He did extensive background dives on any guy who so much as looked at her.
But on the rig mission, she’d nearly been torn apart in demon-infested waters. He’d almost lost her to Death’s icy grip. And now, it occurred to him that he didn’t want to lose her to another male, either.
“That’s not going to work,” Mace said. “You know how stubborn she is. It should be one of us. She’s ours.
” The moment the words fell from his lips, he regretted them.
Blade’s eyes shot wide, reflecting Mace’s own shock at having said them.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said quickly.
“I just meant…I don’t know.” Shit. He sounded like an idiot.
“I guess I just don’t want to see her get hurt.
” There. That sounded noble and crap. It was also true.
Wow. He was a paragon of honesty today, wasn’t he?
Blade nodded as if he understood. “I also don’t want her to fall in love with some asshole and ruin what we’ve got.” His long pause ended with a bitter laugh. “Is that fucking selfish, or what?”
It was selfish as shit, but Mace had no room to judge. He was a passenger on the S.S. Selfish right there with Blade.
And yeah, Scotty falling in love would suck. The three of them had been a team for over a decade, friends for longer. Inseparable and synced. How would they be able to fit anyone else into their tight circle?
Suddenly, Mace’s wrist comms vibrated, saving him from thoughts that would only make him want to join Blade in drinking himself blotto.
A screen flashed in front of his eyes as the comm’s NeuroLink connection to the chip in his temple completed.
Blade glanced down at his comms and back up, and Mace knew his buddy was seeing the same holo-missive from Kynan.
New mission. My office. One hour.
An hour. Perfect. Gave Mace enough time to do his thing with Alayna and for Blade to finish with Masumi.
Would she still look like Scotty?
The question weighed more heavily on him than he’d like, but at least they had a mission to concentrate on. Nothing kept problems on the back burner like a dangerous assignment.
Blade must have been thinking the same thing, because the tension fled from his body. “I’ll meet you downstairs in forty-five.” He offered his fist. “Team up.”
Tapping knuckles, Mace nodded. “Team up.”
Team Selfish was on the move.