Shadowfae (3 page)

“You’re a fucking psycho.” I wriggled, but he gripped my neck with both hands, pressing his thumbs hard into my spine. A thin wire of fear pierced cold.

He leaned over me, his breath hot and damp on my shoulder, his sugary amphet sweat reeking. “How does it feel to fuck a dead man? I guess you know that already, since you’re screwing Ange Valenti, too. You doing the whole family now?”

My stomach churned, and a horrid heat crept up over my skin. Humiliation shook me. I wanted another cigarette. I wanted away from Quinn, his hot breath, lustful eyes, and hateful grin. Away from all men who assumed a succubus was no better than a cheap whore, men who knew nothing of thrall or rapture or the sweet slither of a demon lord’s command in your blood.

I rammed the chair leg back into his shin, and he howled and let me go. I sprang up to face him, anger burning in my heart, brandishing the chair between us to ward him off. “Yeah,” I invented to taunt him. “All of them. I spread my legs on the kitchen table at Valentino’s and the whole lot of them do me one by one. Two or three at a time, if they feel like it. I take it everywhere.”

“Dirty slut.” A sickly spark kindled in his eyes, and he swallowed, his face twisted in fury. His fingers writhed, as if he longed to grab me, and a dirty dark green shell glimmered and brightened around him, translucent like an aura.

I faltered. What the hell was that?

But I didn’t have space to worry about it. I plonked the chair down and leaned over it, daring him. “Hell, I’ll screw anyone—the deader, the better. But I’ll never screw you, Killian. I won’t sink that low.”

Bright blood trickled onto his upper lip. He sniffed, gritting his teeth, that strange green aura writhing. He pulled his .38 from beneath his jacket and cocked it, his thumb sliding lovingly over the hammer. “That so? Maybe you should screw this, you horny bitch.”

My heart stopped, cold slivers of dread piercing my veins. I imagined what he’d like to do with that gun, and backed away, my nerves screaming at me to run. I’m deathless—more or less—but I’m not indestructible. “Jesus, Quinn, don’t.”

The door snicked ajar, and before it opened fully, Quinn hid his weapon away.

Relief flooded me like alcohol, and I detested Quinn more than ever. I turned, shaking. “I’m done with him, Constable. He never lasts long—”

Red lips, curled into a vacant smile. Hard black eyes rimmed with golden lashes, crisp choirboy hair the same metallic color falling around a gentle jaw and soft, rounded cheekbones. A black suit with a garish blue tie, like he’d stepped in from the office.

My thrall bangles tingled, and heat prickled up my arms, sickly sweet. Inside my belly, my drug-sleepy rapture coiled contentedly, lazy like a deadly snake in the sun. Thrall always knows its own, no matter how I squirm and evade.

Kane stared at me, green sparks of amusement dancing in his hair. My heart sank, but at the same time, an unfamiliar, unwelcome warmth shivered through my blood. For once, I was pleased to see him.

Quinn backed off, wiping a red smear from his nose, and the constable bundled in behind Kane with anxious eyes. “Sorry, boss, I couldn’t—”

“Killian Quinn.” Kane’s soft voice crackled with chill, and behind him a fluorescent tube shattered, raining glass shards. “I believe I’ll take this from here.”

“Sure.” Quinn swallowed, the strange green aura flaring. “Whatever you say. Just the job, no hard feelings, okay?”

Kane just looked at him, fingernails blackening.

Blood erupted from Quinn’s nose, painting his shirtfront crimson. He choked and stumbled backwards, cursing in bloody bubbles. Uselessly he bent over, trying to stop the flood with his hand. A dark puddle spread on the floor, fat drips plinking, and the warm coppery stink rose, fresh and tasty.

The constable blanched, darting a glance at Kane. “Jesus. I’ll get some ice. Umm . . . wait here.” He raced out, glad of the excuse to leave us alone.

Petty satisfaction toasted my heart, and I resisted an impulse to run up and kick Quinn in the balls while he was down. Sometimes Kane’s justice is cruel, but it’s always deserved.

Kane strolled up to the table and riffled through the photos. He paused at the dead fire sprite, trailing his fingertip over the limp white hair. “I like this one,” he remarked, and held it out to me like a child sharing an ice cream.

I took it, and he slid his icy hand into mine and walked me out.

3

I
f I were a demon lord, I’d want at least a palace, if not a castle, with a moat and a slimy rat-infested dungeon in which I could incarcerate misogynist bastards like Killian Quinn. I’d have candlelit banquet halls, ballrooms, dusty libraries full of spell-books and lost novels by the greats. My bedroom would be festooned with a luxurious four-poster and a massive claw-foot bath, and I’d have cooks, cleaners, manicurists and masseurs, people to furnish my wardrobe from the finest boutiques.

Kane lives in a town house in Toorak. Alone, with a sixty-inch LCD TV, a microwave, and a designer futon.

Sure, it’s a nice town house, and Toorak is one of the ritziest suburbs in Melbourne. But Kane just doesn’t get it. Maybe he’s bored with immortality and having whatever he wants. Or maybe it’s just that if there’s ever a point, Kane will miss it.

He didn’t speak the whole way home, just twisted his rings on his slender fingers and stared out the darkened car window, the occasional spark zinging from his hair. Passing headlights glared over his face and glinted in his ink-black eyes.

The driver’s hulking body blocked the windshield, fat green troll fingers gripping the wheel. I shifted around, trying to unstick the fragrant leather seat from my thighs. Exhaustion racked my limbs, but I’d no hope of sleeping. My head ached from hunger and the rapture suppressants, and my neck still hurt where Quinn dug his apelike fingers. It didn’t help that I couldn’t read Kane’s expression, and I didn’t know if he was filthy with me or not.

The troll pulled up in front of the wrought-iron gate and held Kane’s door open with a massive green fist. I scrambled out after Kane, my skirt gluing to my legs. The night air plastered warm and thick on my skin with the imminent storm. Bats flapped in the trees out in the street, and eucalyptus stung fresh in my nose, waking me up and stinging my nerves with trepidation.

My heels clattered on the slippery slate tiles of the courtyard path, and the heavy front door swung open at Kane’s approach. I followed him into the sandstone entry hall, where downlights already shone, the polished mahogany floorboards glaring in my eyes. He draped himself over the low white couch in his candlelit lounge, elegant, arranging his suit so it wouldn’t crease. Flames reflected off the dark TV screen as brightly as they did from his shiny eyes.

“Sit down,” he ordered softly, tiny red flames licking his fingertips.

Cold compulsion gripped my soul, and I sat opposite him in a rush, my heart constricting. He was filthy with me, all right. He’s normally careful with his imperatives. A careless order can be disastrous when you’re in thrall. We don’t have to obey his every whim, and can even do stuff on purpose to annoy him if we dare. He can’t stop us. But a direct order we can’t ignore.

Kane stared at me, cocking his head to one side and then the other. “Tell me what happened at the apartment.”

“Nino was already dead when I got there. Someone . . . someone else trapped his soul before I could. I saw him . . . he grabbed me, we—”

“Who was it? Tell me.”

I swallowed. “Rajah. Rajahni Seth, I mean . . .”

Kane’s eyes narrowed, a swirl of violet light disappearing into their depths, and it dawned on me. Kane had no clue what this was about.

My throat stung with indignation. Rajah lied to me. Kane hadn’t made him trap Nino’s soul. He’d done it for his own sneaky purposes and dropped me in it with the cops just for fun.

Humiliation scorched me for the hundredth time that night as I remembered pressing his body onto mine, drinking in his spicy scent, enjoying his hard cock grinding between my legs, wanting it. Bastard.

Kane’s mouth twisted ruefully, ice crystals glittering on his lashes. “Rajah,” he murmured, thoughtful, before returning his attention to me. “What were you doing in Nino’s apartment, Jade? You cheating on Angelo behind his back?” He hugged his knees to his chest and leaned forward, eyes bright and fascinated. Kane loves infidelity and gossip, so long as he’s not the one being cheated on. He reads
New Idea
and
Famous
from cover to cover every week.

“No, of course not. I was . . .” Confusion wrinkled my forehead. “What do you mean? You sent me there.”

“EmpireTower

Two, LaTrobe Street

?”

“That’s r—Oh, shit.” My heart sank. The Empire apartments were brand new, boasting identical twin towers. The cops picked me up in Empire One.

What a shitfight. I’d blundered into the wrong apartment. Which made my romantic evening out with Quinn—not to mention my almost-wild almost-night of sizzling almost-sex with Rajah—even more irritating. I shouldn’t even have been there. “I’m sorry, Kane. I’ll get it done, I promise—”

“No matter. Forget it. Perhaps you’d like to show me that picture?”

I’d forgotten I still held it, and I offered it to him smeared with my sweat. “This? What’s this all about?”

He studied it, tracing the fairy’s soft jawline. “So pretty,” he murmured, smoke wisping from his fingertip. “Naughty, pretty fairy. Dead. Have you noticed a lot of dead pretties lately, Jade?”

I shrugged, glad to have the subject changed. Melbourne cafés and nightclubs were littered with fairies, banshees, spriggans, and other assorted fae, if you knew where to look. The fae were into pick-me-ups and psychedelic substances. Fairy drugs were magical, reckless, darkly edgy, an experience like no other. Their shit was so fine, you could barely give away chemical drugs anymore. Fairy dealers had practically run the Valenti family out of the party-drug business, so naturally the Valentis put the hard word on them and now they worked for us.

Or they had, until DiLuca started seducing them away, and the whisper in Carlton was that a war was brewing, a clash of brass and blood to rival anything we’d seen in the nineties. But by nature, the fae lived on the edge of chaos, and it was to be expected that one or two would turn up dead every so often. Now Kane mentioned it, I recalled we’d had to hose quite a few off the street out the back of Valentino’s lately. “Not really. A few.”

“Detective Quinn has. He’s asking questions. I don’t like Quinn’s questions.” The photo’s surface bubbled under Kane’s touch, scarlet flame flickering up to his wrist and disappearing into his sleeve. “This child worked for Angelo, the fair blue banshee in Quinn’s picture, too. Someone is poisoning my fae.”

I frowned. “Poisoning?”

“Do you see the ice in this child’s hair? Ice on a fire sprite, Jade. Not normal.”

Disquiet coiled in my stomach. If he was right, it was bad news. Melbourne belonged to Kane, and the demon court usually respected territorial boundaries. Which meant the DiLuca gangsters were using their imagination. Not good. “Maybe it’s just a bad batch. Too much fluoride in the water or something.”

“I think not.”

“You think it’s DiLuca.”

Kane shrugged, elegant.

I’d heard Angelo curse the DiLuca family often enough, but lately they’d thrown a whole new clove of garlic onto Ange’s pizza. Salvatore DiLuca, the patriarch, had turned up drained of blood in a Dumpster—a savage business that Ange claimed he had nothing to do with, though if anyone asked me, I know where I’d be pointing my finger. It took vicious strength to suck the life from such ancient stock, and whatever else Ange was, he had strong and vicious in spades. Anyway, Sal was dead, and the new guy had come out from the old world supposedly to settle things down. No one knew much about Dante DiLuca, except that he was young, powerful, and passionate, which in some people’s books were three perfectly good reasons not to like him already.

I realized what Kane wanted, and icy discomfort crept up my spine. “No. No way. They’ll find me out in five seconds—”

“Not if you do it properly.” Kane’s black gaze was innocuous, but it bored into mine like a power drill, ineluctable. “News gets around. You could stage a fight with Angelo, make Dante think you’re avoiding me. I must know what his game is, Jade, and you will find out for me.”

And there it was. My heart sank, but already the itching need to obey tingled in my weakened muscles and churned sickly in my blood. The narrow thrall bangles stung my wrists, cold and hard. I’d have no rest until I did as he asked. Men. Always more men for whom to humiliate myself. It never ended. And my thrall to Kane had barely begun.

Warm breeze whistled from nowhere, ruffling Kane’s golden hair, guttering the candles. The photo slipped forgotten from his fingers onto the floor. “Come here.”

I didn’t want to. I crawled over, my limbs aching with fatigue, and sat next to him, sinking into the soft white couch, close enough for him to touch me. I just wanted to curl up and pass out, but sleeping wouldn’t help me. My body cried out for sustenance, the kind I couldn’t get from food or alcohol or drugs.