Darkness Returns (22 page)

She trembled, her gaze off to some other place. Her gray wings hung relaxed from her back as if they’d always been there. She wore nothing else besides the bandages around her chest and a pair of shorts. He realized he’d never seen so much of her bare skin before. The black veins ran through her gray flesh like rotted vines.

Had they always been so dark?

Her skin had a shriveled yet glistening quality, especially around her joints.

Had it been like that before?

Then he noticed the threads of gray through her dark hair. She no longer dyed it the color of pitch like she had when they’d first met. She’d given up her piercings as well—even the ones in her ears. But her natural hair color had always bordered on midnight, and he knew for sure she never had any gray.

Fourteen year-old girls—not counting the years she hadn’t aged—did not go gray.

But vampires did.

Vampires aged like the leftovers forgotten at the back of the fridge. They turned into rotten, scaly things, things that eventually looked like the nest guard that had attacked Lockman in New Orleans seemingly a million years ago. The one he’d had to take a blowtorch to.

This happened over time, though. While they tended to shrivel and rot like leftovers, they weren’t produce. They had life spans stretching into the hundreds of years or longer. Rumor—or research, depending on how you looked at it—told of original vamps crossing onto the mortal plane when dinosaurs walked the earth and who had been there to witness their prehistoric extinction, and could share those stories with you today if only the magnitude of eternity hadn’t driven them mad.

Jessie had been a vampire just over a year.

But what were a few gray hairs and some extra wrinkles compared to the demonic wings on her back?

That’s your flaw, Craig.
Kress’s voice came back to him.
You need to come to grips…she is so much more.

Lockman leaned his forehead on the glass and sighed.

I need you, Kate. Jessie needs you.

But they had made a promise to obliterate her soul along with Gabriel’s. He didn’t have Kate to turn to. He didn’t have Marty’s glib advice. He certainly couldn’t discuss this with Jessie. And once upon a time, he would have opened up to Teresa.

Something cool touched the back of his hot neck like a comforting hand.

Lockman whirled around. Found himself alone in the hall.

Alone.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Kress looked at the red stains on the tiles in his shower. They looked like streaks of paint, and all wrong against the coral tiles. Wet rivulets of red ran down the grouted channels between the tiles.

Then he looked at his hands. Split knuckles. Swollen fingers. Somehow one of his finger nails had ripped clean off. Blood covered his fists like red, torn gloves. As much as he’d wanted to damage the wall, he’d only managed to mangle his own hands.

But the rage had taken him, hotter than the scalding shower spray against his back. Hurting himself had tempered some of that careening anger. Now he simply felt like a fool. How would he explain this damage to his hands to the others? Or did they all know, like Lockman did? Had they all figured out their leader’s power to control emotion now equaled his inability to control it within himself?

He stuck his hands under the shower spray and watched his blood sluice down the drain.

Your day of reckoning will come.

Perhaps sooner than he thought.

Teresa sauntered into the Bane Casino in a fresh dress, her abrasions from her battle all but invisible now, and carried her plastic-wrapped souvenir under her arm like a basketball. She smiled even as the trio at the poker table stood and immediately drew weapons, none of them caring about the mortal patrons in the poker room glancing away from their hands at the higher stakes game forming before them.

The trio was all male and smelled of raw meat. While Teresa knew she had technically “met” them all, the only one she recognized was Cage with his pale and angular face. The other two knew something had gone south since Scud let her go after Craig and his Pixie friend, but since everyone else, including little Ms. Hungry Eyes, got wasted at the warehouse, none of them knew exactly
how
south.

Cage’s eyes flicked to the package. Sitting in the car for so long, it had gotten soft and extremely wet. Almost all of the inside of the clear plastic was now painted red. And even wrapped up like that, these guys were wolves. They could smell the blood as easily as she could.

“The fuck is that?”

She tossed the round package on the poker table, bouncing chips and cards every which way. “My way of getting ahead.” Since seeing Jessie sprout wings, Teresa had felt a little punchy, as if she’d had a couple early martinis on an empty stomach and little sleep. She snickered at her pun while thinking how stupid it was at the same time.

Cage’s friends had the typical werewolf attire, one in a loose fitting track suit, going for utility rather than style, the other dressed like a biker, leather jacket, studded belt, and a Led Zeppelin t-shirt so faded the lettering looked like it might rub right off. Weres hung onto old clothes, because anything that wasn’t ripped yet was sure to get shredded someday. Biker jackets actually made for easily slipping out of once you had the zipper open like this guy did.

Teresa still had plenty to learn about her new culture. But once her big operation went down, she’d have plenty of time.

The wolf in the biker garb twitched his waxed mustache and waggled the barrel of his revolver at her. “Where’s Scud? He’s after your ass.”

The smile Teresa felt crack her face made her feel like the female version of Hannibal Lecter. Brilliant. Wicked. Perverse. She kind of liked the feeling. “Before we get too far here, I want to make sure I’m talking to the right wolves.”

Cage moved in quick, grabbed her arm, and poked his pistol in her ribs. “Word’s out you totally blew it with the wolf-killer. I don’t even know how you’re still alive right now. So quit fucking around and tell us what that shit’s all about.” He jerked his head toward the table.

“Cage, hon, was Scud grooming you?”

His eyes narrowed. His upper lip twitched. Something bothered him about her question, but he couldn’t tell what. Teresa could have explained it for him—she had referred to Scud in the past tense. Whether denial or density, he hadn’t quite caught it.

“You mean for his Beta? Yeah. So what?”

“What’s this got to do with the raw meat you just lobbed onto my winning hand?” Biker asked. His revolver wagged again, as if while in human form the werewolf needed something else for a tail.

“That’s my declaration to the pack,” Teresa said. “It means you need to let go of me, take your guns off me, and listen to what I have to say.”

“Bitch, you’re lucky you ain’t already dead. “ This from the guy in the track suit. He absently scratched his balls with the barrel of his gun. The idiotic gesture brought back a clear image of his turn with her. Right before having his way with her, he’d given his balls a double-handed scratch, the sound so abrasive Teresa had been amazed he hadn’t shaved off his pubes with his fingernails.

She had a few thoughts about what she might do to him when the time came.

“Clear the room,” she said, “and open the package.”

The three exchanged looks. For a second, Teresa thought she’d overplayed her hand a second time. They’d take her out back and put a round in the back of her head before they ever got to the package. She couldn’t take that chance. She moved toward the table, ignoring the increased pressure of Cage’s gun against her ribs.

When she reached to tug at a corner of the plastic, Cage slapped her hand away. “Easy. We don’t need a scene.”

Something in his eyes told her he knew what was coming. The goatee he’d been sporting had thinned and the knuckles of the hand gripping his gun turned white. “Just tell me who’s in there.”

Teresa felt another smirk tweak the corner of her mouth. Oh, yeah, Cage saw where this was headed, and it threatened everything he thought he’d have in his life. As Beta, he was meant to get his turn. But something like this, according to wolf law, could smash those plans all to hell.

“I think it’s better you see for yourself.” She looked around at his companions. “Obviously, none of you have trusted me from the start. Never took a word I said seriously.” She held a hand out, palm up, toward the poker table like a game show hostess displaying the latest prize. “That will say more than I ever could.”

“It’s a head,” Biker said, one curl of his waxed ‘stache twitching like a whisker. “From the looks…and the smell.”

“Are we going to play guessing games, or are you going to open it?”

All three exchanged that weary glance again. Track Suit gave his balls another scratch with his gun. Teresa hoped the safety was off. Wouldn’t that be a scene?

“We’ll take it in back,” Cage said. He nodded at Biker.

“I ain’t picking that up.”

Teresa laughed. “When did wolves get so squeamish?” She lifted the package off the table and tucked it back under her arm same way she walked in with it.

Cage led the way through the false section of wall in the poker room that acted as a door. None of them paid any attention to the murmurs from the patrons behind them.

The secret door led into a cement hallway that took a quick left, then a right in a zigzag which ended with another door, this one made of steel and would have looked at home on a storage closet except for the electronic keypad beside it.

Cage tapped a code, the door clicked, and they could all file in, Track Suit taking up the rear directly behind Teresa, his forced proximity—she could feel the crinkling of the fabric of his outfit against her back—as obnoxious as his compulsive genital itching.

Through the metal door, they entered a standard-looking office with cinderblock walls, fluorescent lighting, a metal desk and collection of chairs, and a bank of screens covering one whole wall that gave a nice view from some of the key surveillance cameras throughout the hotel and casino. Not all of them, though. Teresa knew there was another room they called the Hub that gave their security team a full view of nearly every inch of their establishment, and that included the private rooms.

Seeing the screens made her wonder if they’d taped her gang rape initiation into the pack. There probably wasn’t a lot of wolf porn out there, and they’d have to get it where they could. But what did she know? The supernaturals on this plane had accomplished all sorts of mundane ventures. Were-Porn could be real hot.

Cage took the seat behind the desk, the one Scud would normally take in a situation like this. Track Suit stayed standing, leaning against the wall where he could get a view of the surveillance screens as if keeping tabs on a Red Sox game.

Biker flipped one of the plain folding chairs that sat in front of the desk and straddled it, but he pulled it out some so the desk was to his one side and Teresa stood on his other. Revolver dangling from one hand, he crossed his arms and leaned on the back of the chair with a look of someone ready for a good show.

Teresa noticed he’d placed himself opposite Track Suit. She was the monkey in the middle, and the one who would get caught in the crossfire if she made a wrong move. But there was really only one more left to make.

She gripped an edge of the plastic and flung the package outward like holding a yo-yo by the string. The wrapping crackled like a campfire as it unfurled around the bloody mess inside. Glops of blood, some of it dark and congealed spattered outward. Bicker flinched as his face got speckled. Track Suit scooted back against the wall, but the move didn’t save his white, zippered shirt from gaining a new red pattern.

The head rolled free, bounced across the desk, and would have flopped into Cage’s lap had he not slapped his hands down on it. Despite the horrific mess, the effect wasn’t as immediately dramatic as Teresa would have hoped. The head’s face was so smeared with blood, it was hard to tell who it belong to right off.

It took Cage lifting it up and holding out for display to finally convey the message.

Scud’s dead eyes started wide at them through a mask of red. Tendrils of flesh so sopped with blood they looked black dangled from the torn neck.

Track Suit gasped, his pitch so high he sounded like some kind of morning bird.

Biker made a gagging noise that rose up deep from his fat belly. He turned his eyes away from the sight. Teresa noticed the revolver in his hand trembling.

Cage had yet to look the face straight on.

He didn’t need to. He knew damn well whose head he was holding. Still, he turned it around and gazed at the bloody face of his former leader. “You didn’t do this.” His voice rasped like steel wool against a rusty skillet.

“The problem,” Teresa said, liking the confidence in her voice despite the wild beat to her heart, “with picking only males as Alphas is that they have no idea how to handle a real woman.”

Cage’s eyes snapped up from Scud and flared. “Kill this bitch.”

Neither of the other wolves moved.