Relentless Flame (Hell to Pay) (26 page)

Too tight to untie.

She had to hurry. Brandon wouldn’t stay away forever.

Clumsily opening the multitool, she sawed at the straps. The knife slipped in her sweaty hands every few passes.

Brandon’s footsteps became louder, but he walked up the outside aisle. He couldn’t see them yet, hidden as they were between the first two rows of shelves. But he sure as heck would spot them when he turned the corner.

Go faster
.

She sawed desperately on the straps.

Sweat beaded her forehead.

Please
.

Free of the restraints, Scott crumpled to the floor with a sickening thud. Scrambling down, she tugged at her brother’s inert body.
Get up
!

Footsteps approached.

If she could get Scott into the next aisle, they might be able to lose Brandon in the maze of shelves.

Scott moaned when she draped his arm over her shoulder; his shoulder creaked and popped, the sounds turning her stomach. Somehow she hefted him to his feet. Urging him to move, she half dragged him to the end of the racks.

Just get around the corner and we’ll have a chance.

Almost there.

Come on, Scott, walk.

Scott’s weight disappeared.

She staggered backward, landing hard on her butt.

Brandon’s sneering upside-down face entered her field of vision. “Hey, skank, nice of you to join the party.”

He grabbed a fistful of her T-shirt and yanked her to her feet.

Scott lay in a semiconscious bloody ball on the floor, wheezing and gurgling.

“Well, this is perfect. Big hero Hannah trying to save her brother. Which is funny because we wouldn’t even be in this situation if your drunk brother hadn’t blabbed all over creation about your abilities. No one cared about you until this moron opened his mouth. Now you’re the most interesting girl at the ball.”

“What are you talking about?”

He lifted her until the T-shirt fabric cut into her armpits.

“I had to make sure that idiot Blackstone stayed focused on his job and not on a crusade to deliver your stepfather’s apology from the great beyond. Keeping Blackstone away from you would have been enough, but then Judas here sold you out big time.”

Brandon poked Scott with his boot and shrugged. “Moron can’t hold his drink. It was much too easy.”

“Let him go. He’s not part of this.”

“That’s true. But he’s only step one: get you to come here.”

“What?”

“Step two is to get him out of here. Then it’ll be just you and me. Oh, and you’ll need to heal him.”

“Then he can go?”

“Of course. We don’t want this worthless mess. He was just bait, and he almost couldn’t complete that one simple task.”

“Who’s we?”

He laughed, a nasty, razor-sharp sound slicing through her ears. “Blackstone’s and my boss, our lord Jerahmeel.”

Hannah held her breath. Dante had thought Jerahmeel might be interested in her abilities. Disastrous. Things had just gone from bad to worse.

“My boss wants you for sure. My job is to deliver you. What the lord of evil does to you, I can only guess.”

When Brandon grinned, his tiny pig eyes disappeared in his pinched face. He sneered at her brother, who still lay crumpled on his side on the concrete floor.

“Enough chitty-chat. You need to heal him soon, or he won’t get out of here alive. He looks pretty bad off.”

“You’re a jerk.”

Brandon dropped her, and she staggered forward, her knees barking on the concrete. She crawled over to Scott.

“I’m sorry, sis,” he rasped over cracked and swollen lips. Blood trickled down his cheek as he lay curled on his side.

“At least let me get you out of here.” She reached out her hands.

“No. Healing me will kill you”—he wheezed—“or they’ll kill you.”

Brandon’s nasally voice cut through her concentration. “Actually, no, we won’t kill her. We’ll do worse than kill her. Right, babe?”

She refused to meet his twisted expression. Swallowing a lump in her throat, she focused on the one thing she could do before her existence became a living hell of unimaginable proportions. Hannah pressed her hands against Scott’s forearm. The transfer was like hitting a brick wall at full speed. She couldn’t move beneath the force of his pain.

Get it all out of him.
At least one of us can have a normal life after tonight.

Burning agony flowed through her hands and into her veins. All of Scott’s whip slashes appeared on her body and sluiced fire over her raw skin. The torn ligaments in Scott’s shoulders from where he’d hung by his arms crackled and shifted in her joints. Tears coursed down her cheeks as she struggled to inhale against bruised rib muscles—even the smallest effort stabbed poker-hot pain into her chest.

Every place where Scott had been kicked or punched, she absorbed it. The pain sucked. Badly.

Scott, healthier now, pushed her off him as he rolled away. She shuddered as she curled in a ball on the cold concrete. The open wounds burned. Her shoulders throbbed.

“Hannah,” he whispered.

“You’re free. Go have a good life.”

Her brother scrambled to his feet. “Brandon, you asshole. Leave her alone. Let me take her for medical care.”

“Get out of here, douchebag, or I’ll mess you up so bad, even your little sister can’t fix you. Be thankful I didn’t hurt you more. You’re a loser piece of shit. I only hung out with you to get to your sister and her thick-headed boyfriend.”

“Damn it.”

“Get out of here, idiot.” Brandon lunged at him with the whip.

Scott jumped back. “I’m sorry, sis.”

He shot away; the slam of the metal door echoed in the vacuous warehouse. So much for her brother sticking up for her, although she didn’t blame him. There wasn’t much anyone could do against a deranged, inhumanly strong monster like Brandon.

“Speaking of idiots, Miss Thing, where is the ass clown you’ve been hanging out with? I thought he’d be on your ugly tail.”

“Left him behind,” she choked out. “He has no idea where I am.”

“We’ll see.”

When he pulled her by her arm, her transfer-torn shoulder threatened to dislocate. She screamed.

“Shut it, bitch.”

He trailed the metal tips of the whip over her neck, scoring fire across her damaged skin.

“Part of the problem is that you’re more delicate than we’d like. We’ll have to toughen you up so you can be more useful to us.”

“Go to hell.” Her jaw ached with the act of speaking.

He hauled her to the opposite shelf, lashed her leg to the thick metal column, and tied her hands behind her back. Throwing her glasses far into the darkness, he shoved down a black toboggan over her entire head and neck.

Trapped in the dark again, she had only pain and her endless screams for company.

• • •

Slamming the Jeep into a gear-grinding stop next to his abandoned Hummer, Dante sprinted across the parking lot.

A figure wove in and out of the shadows of the warehouse floodlights.

Dante froze, went into a stalk, and waited next to the building.

Blood darkened most of the person’s face and clothing, and the hunched shoulders made it impossible to identify the figure. Heart in his throat, Dante reached out of his hiding area to grab the person.

The male yell cut short as Dante identified the man midswing and pushed Scott into the wall. Dante blinked as he studied the guy. Although his shirt was torn, there were no cuts on his skin. A few small bruises on his face, but no major injuries. Only some dried blood.

“Where is Hannah?” Dante growled, fighting the knife’s call to kill someone evil. This
oåkting
, Hannah’s brother, would suit just fine.

“Hey, meathead, you’re too late. Brandon forced her to heal me after that sick fuck tried to torture me to death.” Scott tried to kick, but Dante sidestepped him.

Dante saw red. “You didn’t stay and help her?” He shoved the man harder against the warehouse wall. Scott gurgled until Dante let up the pressure enough for him to talk again.

“And do what? He’s going to kill someone tonight, and I got the golden ticket to escape, so I took it.”

“And abandoned your sister?”

“Nothing else I could do,” he whined. “Look, man, I love her. She’s my sister. But there’s nothing but death back there. We’ve gotten mixed up in a ton of messed up shit. I’m just glad to be free of it.”

“So you did nothing to help her? Your own flesh and blood?”

He looked at the ground and mumbled. “I told her not to heal me.”

“That’s it? You’re not a man. You’re an embarrassment.”

He flung Scott away like toxic waste.

“Run away like the scum you are. Trust me, you don’t want me to ever see you again, understand?”

“Won’t matter. Dude, you’re dead too if you go in there. Brandon wants you to show up. That’s exactly what he’s hoping for.”

“So?”

“So at least sneak in any other way than the obvious approach. Maybe you’ll have a snowball’s chance.”

“You disgust me.”

“At least I’m alive. More’n I can say about you if you decide to play hero again.”

Scott disappeared into the darkness.

Staring at the massive building before him, Dante fought the hard-wired instinct to rush headfirst to the loading dock, exactly where Brandon’s text instructed Hannah to go. So Dante quickly circled the large building. On the side of the warehouse nearest the river, he spotted a window. It was ajar.

He easily leapt up six feet to grab the casing with one hand and hung on while he carefully opened the window. A rusty creak froze him for a minute until, hearing no answering sound from within, he continued.

With barely enough room for him to squeeze through the gap, he balanced his torso on the sill, ignoring how the casing cut into his belly. He gauged the contents of the room. Someone’s office.

Careful of the knickknacks and pens, he descended onto a bare area of the desk and silently dropped onto the floor. Unlocking the door, he stepped into the main warehouse. A small amount of light filtered down from the end of the warehouse. He held still, listening. Dante heard scratches of boots on dusty concrete at the far end of the structure and an occasional soft feminine groan and whimper.
Jåvlar
. Hannah.

Control the stalk. Do not rush in there.

Row after row of shipping boxes and materials filled the warehouse shelves. Using breaks in the shelves, Dante traveled through the aisles until the outer warehouse wall was at his back. He crawled into a space between boxes and pushed his head out until he could scan the area lit by a flashlight on the floor.

Brandon paced the aisle, muttering to himself as if he were having a conversation with an imaginary friend. Every few steps, he knocked the handle of a whip against his leg.

Laying on the cement floor, a small figure rocked back and forth, working her hands behind her back.

Kristus
.

One of Hannah’s legs had been bound to the rack, her hands were tied with straps, and her head covered by a kind of hood. An occasional cry emanated from beneath the cloth as her arms kept twisting. At her whimper, Brandon knelt down and lifted her a few inches off the floor by her shirt collar. Dante nearly burst out of his hiding place at her strangled cough, but he fought for patience.

“Shut up, bitch.” Brandon dropped her onto the concrete with a stomach-turning thud.

When she didn’t move, Dante’s heart stopped. His hands curled into deadly fists.

After Brandon continued on his shuffling circuit, those hands behind her back twisted again. Pride welled in Dante’s heart at her determination.

Good girl. Keep fighting.

He crept down the back row until he positioned himself on the opposite side of the shelf as Hannah. A few boxes were missing, creating space to hide. If only he could move more boxes aside, then he could pull her through the shelf. Depending on the timing, maybe he had a chance to get her out of this hell.

He waited for Brandon to turn and walk back to the end of the row. Hearing the bastard’s footsteps fade away, Dante grasped a heavy box and scooted it over, inch by agonizingly slow inch, until it rested on the concrete floor. Now he had a clear view of Hannah’s back and shoulders as she continued to wiggle against the bonds.

Dante squeezed himself through the open shelf space and froze.

Brandon stopped in front of a now-still Hannah.

Dante was trapped in the tight darkness of the bottom shelf. He stared at the minion’s booted feet, planted two feet away.

“Where’s your boyfriend? He should’ve been here by now,” Brandon muttered.

When she didn’t answer, he prodded her stomach with his foot. Her entire body jumped as air whooshed out. Dante almost exploded from the shelf. Suppressing the natural urge to annihilate the minion who was hurting Hannah, he relaxed his entire body and cleared his mind. He slowed his breathing and remained motionless. If he drew the minion’s attention, everything would be lost, including Hannah’s life.

“Hmm. Where the hell is Blackstone?” Brandon walked away again.

Dante reached out and gently touched Hannah’s arm.

She jumped again, but he squeezed her arm and stroked the skin with his thumb. Although she stopped moving, tiny gasps escaped from under the hood. Her body quivered.

Please don’t move,
ålskling.

He’d have to pull her across quickly and then get them the hell out of here. A long shot, but there was still a chance he might save her. Grasping the leather strap on her leg, he quietly tore it, the superhuman strength in his fingers serving him well.

What would they do to her if they had him, too?
Herre Gud
, he didn’t want to even think about it. All he wanted to do was remove the woman he loved from the nightmare in which she was trapped. An immortal nightmare he’d brought down on her tiny, human shoulders.

Brandon’s footsteps had grown faint but hadn’t stopped yet in a pivot at the end of the aisle.

Dante tightened his grip on her bound upper arms, cursing as she whimpered faintly.

The steps slowed.

Now
.