Chapter 4
CHAPTER
FOUR
The microwave’s cheerful ding made her jump. Shaking herself, Cecilia set her soda aside. Her fingers just grazed the button when the front door of her apartment burst open.
It slammed against the wall with teeth-rattling force. She yelped and jumped away from the counter as two large vampires she vaguely recognized as bouncers from the bar stormed into the apartment.
“Whoa, what—” Whatever she might’ve been about to say was cut off when one of the vampires lunged for her.
Huge hands closed around her arms and lifted her off her flailing, kicking feet as Duke strode through the broken door. It’d only been a few minutes since she saw him last, but somehow he looked more haggard and cruel than he had when she left him.
“Sorry about this, Cece,” he sighed, kicking the door shut with the heel of his boot. It shook the thin wall as it jammed into the frame at an odd angle. His gaze swept across her little apartment apathetically before it settled on her cell phone, which lay uselessly on the counter.
Duke strode away from the door to pocket it. Nodding to the man holding her, he ordered, “Put her in a chair.”
“Duke, what the fuck are you doing?” she cried. Her sneakers bounced off the hulking vampire’s shins as she thrashed.
He barely seemed to notice. The vampire had no trouble hauling her across the studio to drop her into the antique armchair she and Dahlia had spent a memorable weekend learning how to reupholster.
Her ass had barely hit the cushion when Duke’s other lackey dropped his heavy hands onto her shoulders, pinning her to the chair. Fear sluiced through her veins when Duke crouched in front of her, a sleek black bolt gun in his hand.
“I really hoped you’d tell me on your own,” he muttered. His free hand scrubbed across his face, briefly muffling his low voice. “You were always such a fucking chatterbox at the bar, but now you don’t want to talk. Figures.”
She’d done a lot of risky things — even things she didn’t tell Dahlia about — to chase that fleeting, dangerous high, but staring into the Duke’s flat eyes was a step beyond even her.
She recoiled as far as the hands on her shoulders would allow. Her bones had turned into something she could only compare to jelly, and her skin flashed between being too hot and too cold when she glanced at the weapon in his hand.
“Duke,” she squeaked, pressing her heels into the scuffed wood floor, “I really don’t know what you’re talking about. Please, just— just let me go.”
“Can’t do that until I find out what the Amauris did with my brother.”
Cecilia shook her head vigorously. “I don’t know where Devon went. I don’t.”
“Of course you don’t,” he replied, sounding incongruously reasonable. “But you and I both know who does.”
Cold fear turned into fiery protectiveness in an instant.
“You want Dahlia,” she surmised. An incredulous laugh escaped her. “You want me to… what? Help you get to my best friend so you can get to Felix? What?”
The vampire’s lips thinned. “I don’t need your help.”
“Then why are you doing this, huh?” She looked up at the man holding her captive with scathing disdain. “If you’re stooping to terrorizing women who haven’t done anything to you, seems to me like you’re pretty desperate.”
“Oh, you haven’t seen terror yet, Cece.” Digging her glittery pink phone out of his pocket, Duke continued, “I’d really rather not hurt you, but I will if I have to.
We both know that Dahlia was turned. I know that my brother went to her apartment the night she got released from the hospital.
You know that she’s now living the high life in United Washington with Felix Amauri. ”
His thumb tapped the phone’s screen. It lit up, casting the harsh lines of his face into even more unsettling angles. “What I don’t know,” he continued, “is what happened to my brother after he went to see her. We’re going to find that out together.”
Cecilia stared at him, shocked into silence by the layers of his audacity.
Firstly, at the implication that Devon had gone to see Dahlia out of some concern for her wellbeing and not because he intended to coerce her into the vampire equivalent of marriage.
Secondly, the fact that he knew as much as he did and had any belief that his brother might still be alive.
She didn’t know much about Felix, but what little Dahlia dared to share with her gave her a pretty good idea that he wasn’t the kind of man you lived to cross twice.
“Why?” she breathed. “You can’t get revenge on someone like—”
He rolled his eyes. “Don’t be fucking dramatic. I don’t want revenge. I want restitution. I’m owed a lot of fucking money from the Amauris if they killed my brother and destroyed half my bar. I’m gonna collect.”
Duke didn’t notice her incredulous stare. He was too busy fiddling with her phone. He didn’t bother looking at her until he held the device out to her. “Now, you’re going to be a good girl and give Dahlia a call.”
A breath exploded out of her — not quite a laugh, but close. “What do you want me to say to her?”
“You’re going to tell her that if she doesn’t give me what I want, I’m going to shoot you.”
Her throat spasmed. “And what if she says yes?”
Duke clicked his tongue. Laying his hand on her knee, he gave her a pitying look. “Then I’m still going to shoot you. He was my brother, you know? Fair’s fair.”
Her stomach dropped. Either way she was fucked. The only choice she had was how badly she and her best friend would suffer.
Cecilia wouldn’t have classified herself as particularly brave or selfless. She was soft and hadn’t experienced much hardship in life besides being caught between two parents who despised each other. She was not hero material.
But she was a damn good friend, and she’d sooner throw herself off the rusty fire escape than put Dahlia in harm’s way — or leave her with the lasting trauma of hearing her friend’s murder over the phone.
That need to protect the only family that meant anything to her burned as hot and deadly as the power in the battery pack of Duke’s gun.
Ignoring the phone, she leaned forward as much as her captor would allow. Her lips pulled back in a mockery of her normally sunny grin. “Duke, I say this with absolutely zero due respect: go fuck yourself.”
The butt of Duke’s gun cracked against the soft rise of her cheekbone. The skin split as Cecilia’s head whipped to one side hard enough to make her neck crack.
She’d fallen off a bike once when she was seven and smacked her chin on a curb. Dahlia had run as fast as her scrawny legs could carry her to find an adult, leaving a dazed Cecilia to sit beside her abandoned bike, blood trickling down her neck.
Until the moment Duke struck her, falling off her bike was the most painful injury she’d ever sustained.
Stars exploded in front of her eyes, but it took what felt like a long time for any pain to register. White noise filled her ears as her nerves struggled to catch up with the brutal strike. Her brain didn’t seem to know what to do with the information it’d received.
Her vision went wobbly as reflexive tears filled her eyes. She stared out the window, blinking hard several times, and tried to get her bearings again. Her pulse throbbed in her cheek like the beat of the awful music the DJ played in the bar.
Movement beyond her warped reflection in the window made her squint. It took her a second to realize what she saw wasn’t some pain-induced hallucination.
There really was a man pulling himself up the rickety old fire escape.
Or at least, she thought that’s what it was. It was hard to tell with a dark, glossy visor covering his face and the way he swung his massive body up over the railing, straightened his arms without letting go, and smoothly rocked his legs forward.
A year had passed since she saw more than a glimpse of him, but something in her recognized him instantly.
My phantom.
She didn’t have time to consider what his end goal was. The animal part of her brain understood. It compelled her to turn away from the window and squeeze her eyes shut half a second before a pair of black combat boots shattered the glass.
Shards rained down on her as the vampires reached for their guns. She lurched forward, throwing herself off the chair and onto her hands and knees just in time to avoid losing part of her head to a plasma bolt.
The acrid scent of it seared the inside of her nose as she crawled away. Glass sliced her palms and bare knees but she didn’t feel it.
Pressing her back against the kitchen cabinet, she swallowed a scream as a massacre played out before her.
The man in black didn’t appear to have a gun. He didn’t even have a knife. While the three vampires each had bolt guns, he fought with nothing more than his gloved hands.
Matte black claws slashed at the vampire who’d held her in the chair.
His gun clattered to the ground as a dark smile spread across his throat.
In the span of a heartbeat, his mouth opened and his head flopped back, almost completely separated from his neck.
Blood erupted in a geyser across that lovingly upholstered chair and window as he collapsed onto the floor.
I’m going to have to reupholster that chair again, she thought, too stunned to do much else.
An involuntary sound of alarm escaped her as she caught sight of Duke, the vampire closest to her, raising his gun to fire at her phantom. The newcomer’s head swiveled toward her just in time to avoid a point-blank shot to his helmet.
The plasma bolt just grazed one side. It was more than enough contact to do devastating damage to most material, but apparently not whatever the helmet was made of. The white-hot plasma merely scorched the strange glass.
The bolt seared a hole in the wall behind him. It hardly had the chance to smoke before the phantom swooped down on Duke like a gods-sent calamity.
Cecilia watched in horrified fascination as he went for the vampire’s extended arm. She’d never seen anyone or anything move the way he did. It was faster than fast and so graceful that she had trouble tracking him.
And he said nothing. Not when the vampires hollered at him, demanding to know who he was and warning him to leave or they’d shoot again. Not even when Duke frantically tried to bargain with him.
In one smooth movement, he’d grasped Duke’s arm, raised his knee, and brought the arm down across it — once, twice, and a third time.
Bone burst through flesh with a sickening crack. A sickening yowl of agony escaped Duke’s throat. His gun fell to the floor and slid into the widening pool of blood made by his nearly decapitated lackey.
Cecilia drew her scratched legs up to her chest as if they might shield her from the horror.
She wanted to cover her eyes, but she couldn’t lift her arms to do it.
She couldn’t even close her eyelids. Her gaze was locked on the phantom as he tore off the lower half of Duke’s arm and casually tossed it aside.
Blood gushed from the wound, but it was the least of the vampire’s worries when the phantom grasped both sides of his head. She couldn’t quite figure out what he intended to do until he began to squeeze.
The heels of his gloved hands pressed inward, into the delicate indents of Duke’s temples.
With one ruthless shove, the sides of the vampire’s head caved in.
His mouth opened in a silent scream as the capillaries in his eyes burst. Blood streamed from his nose and the corners of his eyes as they popped like cherry tomatoes in their crushed sockets.
It was over in a matter of seconds but it felt like it took hours for Duke to stop struggling.
The man in black dropped him to the floor.
Duke lay twitching and gurgling, the shape of his head reminiscent of some crooked neck gourds that sold for too much money at the grocery store around the fall equinox.
She couldn’t stop staring at him. Even when the last vampire standing made an unsuccessful run for the door, she couldn’t tear her gaze away from her dying boss.
He stared sightlessly back at her through the pulped gelatin of his eyes, blood oozing from his mouth and pearly fangs gleaming in the dull yellow light streaming through her shattered window.
His last breath was a thready, pathetic wheeze.
The only thing that managed to pull her attention away from him was the steady tread of combat boots across the old wood floor.
She swallowed hard, shaking from head to toe, as they came to stand between her and Duke’s body. They were completely black, but she could make out the gleam of blood splatter on the matte material and heavy rubber tread.
His slow crouch was so smooth that she didn’t even hear the rustle of his clothing. He rested his wrists on his knees and cocked his helmeted head.
The pose was so casual that she nearly let out a burst of hysterical laughter, but managed to swallow it back just in time.
The fingers of his deadly right hand flexed and curled. From somewhere deep within that blacked out helmet, a familiar robotic voice intoned, “You require assistance.”
“I don’t,” she rasped. The words were nearly inaudible, as if her throat had been scraped raw by a scream she never got to release.
She flinched when the hand that had so casually split a throat raised. The very tips of those metal-covered claws touched a spot below her wounded cheek.
In that same toneless voice, he insisted, “You do.”
Her mouth opened to protest, but she didn’t get a chance to. Instead, a yelp burst from her lips as something sharp struck her bare thigh.
Cecilia looked down in horror. While she’d been distracted, he’d apparently retrieved what looked like a very small, unlabeled pen injector. The tiny needle was stuck in her leg while his thumb depressed the plunger at the top.
“What is that?” she screeched, trying to kick him and his needle away. “Whatever that is, just—”
“You require assistance,” he repeated. A gloved hand dropped to pin her leg down, holding her still. Fear surged as she vividly recalled what those hands had so easily done to Duke’s arm. And other parts of him.
A pathetic whimper slipped past her lips. “Please just let me go.”
The shape of him began to waver. Even his robotic voice seemed to come from farther away when he replied, “No.”
Tongue growing worryingly heavy, she slurred, “Why?”
She listed to one side, but she didn’t make it far. The phantom caught her head and eased her down onto the floor. The scent of his gloves — blood-saturated leather and something indefinable — permeated her lungs as her vision darkened.
“Because,” he answered simply, “you need me.”