Bound Guardian Angel (35 page)

Even more attractive than—

She blinked and focused on the road as a
sorrowful ache speared her heart. Trace had the same angular face
as Gideon. The same seductively heavy eyelids and brooding
sensuality.

But Trace’s eyes were both kinder and more
intense than Gideon’s. And his lips were fuller, more sensuous.
Gideon’s mouth had always been set in a hard line, and his eyes had
always held an almost palpable coldness, as if both were a shield
to throw people off his benevolent nature and warm heart.

But her attraction to Trace went beyond his
face. He held himself with an air of power and aloof confidence
that beckoned her in the same way sunlight beckoned a flower to
turn toward its warmth.

Not since Gideon had she felt such yearning.
But as much as she had desired Gideon above all others, she wanted
Trace more. And that terrified her.

That was why she needed to get as far away
from Asylum as she could.

Good thing her Grudge Match audition was
tonight, because if she stayed at the ranch one more second, she
would lose the willpower to resist him.

God help her, but she was setting herself up
to be hurt all over again. To feel heartache’s traitorous stab.

Which meant Grudge Match was just what she
needed. What better way to eradicate her fears than by beating
somebody up?

She sped toward Chicago’s South Side and the
address she’d been given, ready to channel this heartache into
beating the ever-living shit out of the unfortunate souls selected
to face her in this thing called the gauntlet.

She had no doubt she would make it through.
This was one time when her lack of feeling worked to her advantage.
There wasn’t a lot her combatants could do to stop her, and since
guns and other piercing weapons weren’t allowed in the
gauntlet—according to the rules—she didn’t have to worry about
being shot or stabbed, which could actually do damage without her
knowing it.

She rolled through a part of Chicago that
law-abiding humans steered clear of. Human gangs ruled
block-by-block here, dealing drugs, shooting up, pimping, and
protecting their turf.

Fools. If only they knew how close they were
to extinction, because if the drecks ever took over the world, the
first thing they would do after eradicating vampires would be to
enslave humanity.

Not that all drecks wore a shroud of
villainy. Severin was half-dreck, and he was one of the good guys,
and his dreck mother was as sweet as they came. But the majority of
drecks followed Premier Royce, who had his corrupt hand in every
evil undertaking Cordray had ever encountered. She just didn’t have
tangible proof, because while Bain knew of her gifts to see the
truth inside people’s thoughts, Royce would never honor her word
against any member of his race. Which meant that until she found a
smoking gun implicating Royce, there was nothing she could give
Bain to throw in his face during one of their meetings.

As a CPD patrol car flew through an
intersection up ahead, it’s red and blue lights flashing and siren
blaring, Cordray sighed at the folly of man.

The only things standing between total dreck
domination and the annihilation of human civilization were
vampires. Yep, that’s right. A race of beings humans had glorified
in their silly Hollywood horror movies—incorrectly, by the way—was
what allowed gangbangers all over Chicago the freedom to kill each
other over a stretch of turf three city blocks long.

In the heart of the South Side’s warehouse
district, she pulled up to the address she’d been given and hopped
off her bike.

A hooded male who reminded her of the Grim
Reaper approached. She couldn’t see his face, but he was big,
broad, and all business.

“Turn around,” he said, swirling his index
finger.

She did, and he began patting her down.

“You’ve read the rules?” he asked, his deep
voice thickly accented, but she couldn’t place his nationality.

“Yes.”

His hands skimmed down both legs, back up to
her hips, then down her arms. “Face me.”

When she turned, she saw that he wore a
white mask like the ones worn by the dance crew JabbaWockeeZ.
Plain. No markings. Pure white, with holes for the eyes, nostrils,
and mouth. Under his hood he wore a dark-grey skullcap with a red
band around the hem.

Interesting. In only a few days she’d
stumbled upon two males wearing masks. What were the odds?

“Nice mask,” she said, as his palms began
traveling over the front of her the way a police officer would
search a suspect for weapons. At least he wasn’t lewd and crude,
stopping to fondle her breasts or grab her crotch. Jabba-man was
all business.

He didn’t reply to her compliment. Just
finished frisking her. “She’s clean,” he said, speaking into a
transmitter as he turned her toward a dark alley ten yards
away.

“Then send her in.” The leisurely male voice
that came through the speaker was rich and elegant, the words
flowing smoothly on a gentle lilt that sounded almost like
amusement, yet not quite. More like curiosity.

“Go ahead.” The man in the mask gestured for
her to enter the alley.

“Don’t I even get a good luck?” She arched
one eyebrow at him.

He didn’t move, not even a flinch. Just
stood with his hands clasped in front of him military-style, feet
shoulder-width apart. But she had a feeling that behind his mask,
he was grinning.

When he didn’t respond, she simply turned,
slipped on the brass knuckles she’d brought with her, which were
totally allowed in the gauntlet, and headed toward the mouth of the
alley.

A few feet from the entrance, she stopped
and surveyed the dark narrow gap between buildings, tilting her
head as she studied the shadows.
This
was the gauntlet?

She’d expected it to be more ominous. More
threatening. More this-could-end-your-life.

The alley looked more like the backdrop for
a B-rated horror flick than a bone-crushing beat-down waiting to
happen.

Whatev. If this pansy-assed stroll along the
yellow brick road was what she needed to go through to find a
connection between Premier Royce and Bishop’s lab experiments, she
would play Dorothy. Just as long as she didn’t have to wear that
disgustingly quaint powder-blue dress. But the ruby slippers were
aces.

She would never turn down such a fine pair
of footwear.

Let’s do this.

The dull thud of her rubber soles on the wet
concrete broke through the sounds of dripping water from the
surrounding buildings as she entered the alley.

Fog turned what dim light there was into a
milky haze, and condensation dribbled down the brick walls like
alien secretions. Water
drip-dripped
somewhere in the
darkness ahead.

Movement to her left!

She ducked as a thick arm swung at her head,
wielding a length of heavy chain. Fast as lightning, she swept her
leg out and knocked her attacker on his ass and jumped on him.

Crack! Crack!

Two hits and he was out cold. Probably with
a broken jaw.

Easy enough. She drew a checkmark in the air
with her finger then rose to her feet, standing over her
unconscious assailant.

Then she eyed the chain. That pretty thing
could come in handy.

She pried the chain from his muscled fingers
and draped it around her neck before venturing farther in.
What
was once yours is now mine, asshole.

The gauntlet had to get harder than that
guy. He’d just been bait, giving her a false sense of security.

Well, fuck that. She didn’t do secure. And
she didn’t do false. Despite her sissy-faced footwork with Trace
earlier, this Dorothy was a bazooka-toting badass compared to that
bitch from Oz. If someone worse awaited her, he—or she—had better
be prepared for an ass-whooping.

Her heavy combat boots thunked on the
pavement as she marched onward. She didn’t want these assholes to
think she was afraid. Because . . .
well . . . she wasn’t. Maybe she was scared of her
body’s response to Trace, but she’d be damned before she let
something as trite as losing a little blood or breaking a bone stop
her from doing her job.

Two vampires jumped out from the adjacent
alleyway, one holding a bat and the other a whip.

Oh really now? A whip? So cliché. So
unimaginative.

The one with the bat took a swing, and she
dodged. He swung twice more, wielding the bat like it was a sickle
and she was the field of wheat he was trying to cut down.

She heard the crack of the whip and felt a
whisper of contact on her arm. Well, she didn’t so much feel it as
see her coat sleeve twitch against the bite of leather on
leather.

She glanced at her arm to find he’d sliced a
tear in her coat. Damn it!

Enough of this shit!

Gripping the length of chain, she swung it
over her head, and shot it toward whip boy as she double-dutched
over another home-run swing. The chain whirled around her
attacker’s neck as she landed back on her feet.

“How do you like
my
whip, asshole?”
She yanked, choking him, and spun around in time to clock bat boy
in the nose with the sole of her boot before he could break her arm
with another swing for the fences.

Seconds later, she dispatched them both to
the wet pavement—alive but unconscious—then collected her chain and
continued on. A glance at her forearm showed it was bleeding where
the whip had sliced through her coat. What did that guy have on the
tip of that thing? Razors?

As she walked, she yanked her sleeve up and
licked the cut. Her venom healed it within seconds.

Too bad venom didn’t heal leather coats. She
let her torn sleeve fall back down her arm and scowled at the
shadows, ready, waiting, torqued to get on with it and make it
through to the inner circle. But no one erupted from the shadows to
take her on. After another ten yards and no action, it felt like
the onslaught was over.

No way. There had to be more to the gauntlet
than that.

As if on cue, the alley became eerily quiet.
Too
quiet. Too dark. The shadowed exit was less than ten
yards away, but she stopped, anyway. Something wasn’t right. Call
it instinct, but Cordray had learned to trust that deathly calm
usually signaled a coming storm. Shifty, wary, and ready for
anything, she took a cautious step forward. Then another.

The scent of a dreck just beyond the exit
touched her senses.

A dreck?
It was one more clue to add
to her growing list of things she hadn’t expected about Grudge
Match.

Was he watching? Waiting?

Despite taking a mental sweep, she got
nothing.

Then she heard a low growl come from a dark
corridor to her right.

Then a snarl.

She took a defensive step to the left,
preparing for whatever was coming for her.

“What are you afraid of, bitch?” A vampire
taller and wider than any she had ever seen—even bigger than
Bain—stepped out of the shadows.

Finally. An adversary worth fighting.

“Nothing,” she said. “Just waiting for the
show to start.”

He took a lumbering step forward, all power
and force. “You’ve got balls.”

“You have no idea.” She tightened her grip
on the chain, although she doubted it would do much good against
Sasquatch.

He cracked his knuckles then his neck with
side to side snaps.

“Maybe I’ll just knock you out and fuck
you,” he said with another steady step toward her. “Pretty little
vampire like you. You’d be a nice fuck, wouldn’t you?” His hands
curled into fists.

“Only if you can get it up. But even if you
could, you’d actually have to find your pecker to do something with
it, and I doubt you’ll be able to find something that small.”

The beast’s brow furrowed as if he didn’t
quite understand. Or maybe he hadn’t expected her response and
didn’t know how to react now that she’d made it clear she wasn’t
going to shrivel up like a nancy and beg him not to hurt her.

“What’s wrong?” she said. “Am I talking too
fast for you?”

Sasquatch recovered and took an ominous step
forward. “Bitch.” Then he lunged and tackled her to the ground.

Since she didn’t have to deal with the
nuisance of pain, she throttled him two-fisted, slamming her
brass-knuckled fists into either side of his neck right before his
elbow crashed into her chest. She didn’t feel it, but the shock to
her lungs made her cough and gasp for air, anyway. But he was worse
off than she was, clutching his neck as he rolled off her. She
leaped behind him and swung the chain around his neck and pulled
with everything she had.

But this fucker was a strong SOB. He grabbed
the chain, pulled himself to a crouch, and then flung himself
forward. She flew over his head and landed on her back. Pebbles of
pocked pavement scuttled past her as he reached down and grabbed
her by the hair. With a severe yank, he pulled her to her feet so
she faced him.

“So you came to fight, huh?” he said,
breathing in her face.

He needed a mint.

“You’re about two IQ points shy of a genius,
aren’t you? Isn’t it called the gauntlet? We are supposed to fight
here, right?” She did
not
like this guy pulling on her
braids one little bit. Little Aiden had worked hard on them tonight
before falling asleep, and this asshole was messing up her mad
styling skills.

“I think you want Old Navy or the GAP,” he
said. “This place isn’t for dainty things and little women.”

“Then what are
you
doing here, dick
face?”

For a split second, she thought he might
laugh, but instead he scowled and pulled her hair harder. “That’s
some mouth you’ve got there, pretty thing.” He gave her braids a
sharp tug.

She’d had just about enough with the hair.
“Since you’re so keen on thinking I’m too much of a sissy to be
here, let me clue you in on a little something,” she said.