Chapter One #2
A towel is shoved through the chain-link, and I take it without looking, pressing it against my hands, watching the way the blood smears rather than stops.
Around me, the crowd keeps feeding the moment, the echoes of my name still rolling through them in uneven bursts, like they can’t quite let it go.
And I stand in the center of it, untouched in any way that matters, letting the noise wash over me without ever quite reaching where it counts.
Because the fight is over.
And I’m still here.
Waiting for the next one.
“That’s our Scar.” Ruckus grins from the edge of the betting table, his leprechaun luck still glowing faintly around his hands from whatever odds manipulation he’s been running tonight. “Still got it, old man.”
I don’t dignify that with a response.
From somewhere to my right, Rhett’s voice carries over the noise without effort, loud in that unapologetic way he’s worn his whole life. “Bet you fifty bucks Scar didn’t even break a sweat.”
Bennett doesn’t look up from the knife he’s running a cloth over, which he has absolutely no reason to be cleaning right now. “I don’t gamble with hellspawn. Your kind cheats.”
“Rich…” Rhett says, entirely unbothered, “… coming from someone whose entire deal is divine intervention. That’s just cheating, but with better PR.”
I wipe blood from my knuckles with more focus than the task requires. “Both of you, shut it. Some of us are trying to bleed in peace.”
They fall quiet, not for lack of thought, but because neither of them is ready to put it into words.
Flux shows up at my elbow like he always does, and somehow already where I need him before I ask. “Raze wants everyone upstairs. Club meeting.”
I nod once and drop the towel before walking out of the fighting pit.
A VP’s job is never done.
***
The back halls of the club are a different world from the pit.
Down there, it’s noise, heat, and the theater of violence.
Up here, it’s cold concrete, fluorescent light, and the quiet, grounding smell of leather and oil, a space built for control, not spectacle.
I pass through the storage corridor where crates are stacked floor to ceiling, each one labeled with the name of a liquor distributor that processes less liquor than it does everything else.
Coil stands at the far end beside Maul, both of them hunched over paperwork built to keep customs blind and happy. The manifest tells a clean story, legal cargo, nothing worth looking at twice.
Bullshit, obviously.
Coil’s serpent eyes track me as I walk past, his voice smooth when he speaks, calm enough to make people miss how dangerous he really is. “We’re moving the Seelie relics tomorrow night. Buyer’s paying triple.”
“Make sure the paperwork’s clean,” I state, without stopping. “I don’t want heat.”
Behind me, a crate crashes to the floor, followed by an argument loud enough to turn heads.
“I’m just saying…” Rhett grunts, hauling something he clearly thinks is beneath him, “… if heaven’s so great, why’d they need walls?”
“Security.” Bennett doesn’t even sound strained. “Something hell wouldn’t understand, since it’s basically an open-concept nightmare.”
“Open-concept is modern design, Feathers.”
“Drop the crates…” I say, “… not the IQ points. Move it!” and keep walking down the hall.
The main room is packed wall to wall, thick with the kind of crowd that only shows up when the people in charge are all under the same roof.
Brothers crowd the bar. Club girls own the couches and tables like queens holding court.
Prospects hover around the edges, trying way too hard to look relaxed while they wait for someone to bark their next order.
Raze is sprawled across the sofa with Roxy tucked against his side, his hand resting on her thigh like it belongs there and always has.
They’re talking low enough that the rest of the room disappears around them.
Something quiet passes between them, something private, then Roxy laughs suddenly, as if the sound catches her by surprise.
And Raze…
Fuck.
His whole face shifts when he looks at her, stripped down in a way I’ve never seen in all the centuries I’ve known him.
He looks content.
Her fingers are moving in her lap, small sparks jumping between them like static that’s learned to dance. Magic, she’s still learning the shape of, still coaxing it into something she can trust. And Raze is watching those sparks, like they are the most important thing in the room.
Something tight twists in my chest at the sight of them. I shove it down on instinct before it can grow teeth, burying it under five centuries of bad habits and things better left untouched.
Rhett appears behind me and lobs a peanut that lands precisely between the two of them. “Get a room!”
Bennett looks pained. “Please get a room. Some of us have eyes and would like to keep them pure.”
“Since when do you care about purity?” Rhett’s voice is the definition of unhelpful. “You literally incinerated a guy last week.”
“That was divine judgment. It’s completely different.”
“Sure. And when I do it, it’s ‘excessive violence.’ ”
I turn just enough for them to catch my eyes—red and cold—the same shade that’s been followed by blood and bad decisions for the last five hundred years. “Children… the next word out of either mouth had better be useful, or you’re both on toilet duty for a month.”
They stop.
Across the room, Raze flips us all off without looking away from Roxy, while she grins into his shoulder.
Church finally settles because Raze flips the switch and stops looking like a man wrapped up in his woman. One second, he’s got Roxy against his side, the next he’s the prez again. He leans forward, and the whole room falls into line around him without a single word needing to be said.
Wreck reports.
Flux reports.
Ruckus lays out numbers from the fight ring that would make a banker’s hands shake.
The legitimate businesses are performing exactly as they should.
The illegitimate ones are performing better.
Everything is operating the way an empire operates when the people running it have had centuries to learn from their mistakes.
Then the other thing…
Rogue vampires.
Humans attacked.
Territory compromised.
I listen to Flux with my jaw locked tight, staring straight ahead while I pick through every detail he drops in the same way I study a fighter before I tear him apart. Looking for the crack, the mistake, the one piece that makes the rest of the bullshit make sense.
“This isn’t normal vampire behavior,” I say when Flux finishes. “Someone’s either genuinely stupid, or they’re sending a message.”
The room takes that in quietly.
“Want backup?” Rhett raises a hand from the back. “I’m excellent at tracking things that bleed.”
“You’re excellent at making things bleed,” Bennett says. “There’s a difference.”
“Tomato, to-mah-to.”
I turn to look at them slowly. My eyes have gone the color of old blood, and the smile I’m not wearing is somehow louder than the glare. “The next interruption comes with fangs. Choose wisely.”
Both prospects’ eyes locate the floor with sudden, intense interest.
Raze nods. “Find them. End them. I don’t want cops or hunters near our territory.”
Church breaks apart the same way it always does, brothers peeling off and moving slowly to get back to running a kingdom the rest of the world isn’t even supposed to know exists.
I’m already working the problem over in my head before half of them leave the room… frenzied feeding, sloppy kills, and far too much blood left behind. That kind of mess usually comes with panic, ego, or a vampire too far gone to give a shit who notices.
Behind me, the prospects are handed cleanup duty down in the pit, and Bennett sounds about one bad second away from regretting every life choice that brought him here. “I’m an angel of the Lord. I shouldn’t be mopping blood.”
“Should’ve thought of that before you fell in with bikers,” Rhett tells him.
“I didn’t fall. This is a mission.”
“A mission. Right. That’s why you have a cut with your name on it.”
“Move!” I don’t look up. I don’t need to. And they scatter.
The club moves around me, loud and sharp as a blade, everyone slipping back into their part like this life was carved into them at birth.
I head out into the night with blood drying across my knuckles and a heaviness under my skin that has nothing to do with rogue vampires and everything to do with the feeling that something bigger has started moving.
So many centuries, and trouble still finds me the same way it always has.
I’ve never once been one to back down from it.
And I’m not about to start now.