Whiskey and Wry (Sinners Series) (34 page)

D
AMIEN
’
S
guitar case was right where he’d left it, leaning against the wall near the lift doors. Sionn grabbed the handle and hoisted it up, intending to put it someplace he wouldn’t forget it, when he caught a strong scent in the air. It was curiously metallic and with a faint offal overtone, a familiar smell that made his belly roil.

“Those cleaners were supposed to be—” He took a single step to round the corner, then froze in place, shocked at the dead man sitting in one of his dining room chairs.

He didn’t know the dead man, although his slack, waxen features looked vaguely familiar. What drew Sionn’s eyes was the blue-haired woman zip-tied to a chair next to him. Unlike the man, her limbs were attached, and a healthy flush churned pink into her cheeks. Her eyes were large and wild, and a gag made out of rags kept her mouth secured. Wiggling furiously, she flung her head to Sionn’s right, repeating the action over and over until the chair creaked beneath her shifting weight.

“Leigh!” Sionn felt something hit the guitar case, and he turned, catching sight of a blond man with his arm raised and his hand around a Taser. The device’s two leading lines were strung out, its connectors lying helplessly on the floor as the device discharged its shock into its endcaps.

The
asshole
… it was the only name Sionn could think to call the man… was bigger than he’d imagined. For some reason, Sionn’s mind had constructed a thinner man, more along the lines of Damien’s lithe body, but the bright-haired villain in their own personal melodrama was built more like a chunk of hewn granite.

A very ugly chunk of granite. Solid and something that would pack a wallop if used on someone’s skull.

“Jesu,” Sionn swore, holding the case up to block the Taser coming at his head. It was easily batted aside, and the man growled, advancing on Sionn with a hitching gait. “Miki boy, you’ve got my respect.”

He didn’t need to wonder if the blond was the same man who’d killed Damie’s mother or attacked Miki. The beating Sinjun’d given the man was still evident on his face. Mottled bruises turned his hatchet-sharp cheeks alarming colors, and one eye was still violently bloodshot, its socket probably blown out or chipped. The swelling turned his attacker’s already harsh face to a grotesque mockery of flesh, more gargoyle than human.

The lumbering stumble he made toward Sionn didn’t help dispel that image, especially when he lifted his arm and Sionn spotted the wicked kitchen knife clenched like a talon in his right hand.

Light caught on the steel blade’s sharp edge, running a line of silver along its length as it descended. Armed only with Damie’s heavy case, Sionn twisted his arms about, trying to bat the knife aside. Its tip caught his shirt, tearing down the length of his chest, and he felt a stinging kiss as the edge sliced into his skin. Grappling Sionn’s arm, the blond shifted on the balls of his feet, trying to get a clear shot at Sionn’s body, but his lack of grace ate at his balance, throwing him off-kilter. His greater weight pushed Sionn back, and they fell, sliding across the recently polished floor.

The guitar case skittered over the wood, skating in slow arcs until it came to rest against the wall across from the elevator’s doors. The blond’s knife flew into the air, and Sionn lost sight of it under the blur of the other man’s arms and grasping hands. Kicking out at the man’s legs, he tried to stand up, but his foot caught on something wet, and Sionn went down again, his left knee slamming into the floor. He tasted blood in his mouth, and Sionn sucked at the bite he’d made in his own lip. The floor was dotted with more blood, and he briefly wondered how deep a cut he’d gotten on his shoulder, when he saw another flash of metal coming out of the shadows above him.

“Shite.” It was time to take a page out of Miki’s book. If it worked for the singer, it would have to work for him. Sionn caught one of the heavy dining room chairs with his outstretched hand and heaved it up above his head, just in time to block the blond’s advance.

The man had either found the formerly airborne knife or had another at the ready, because the blade punctured the chair’s seat with a good four inches of deadly steel spurting out from the upholstery and stopping a hairsbreadth from Sionn’s nose.

Twisting the chair aside, Sionn caught the man’s arm with the seat back, pulling the knife out of his grasp. Using the chair’s girth to block the man’s next attack, Sionn struggled to get to his feet, nearly falling again when his sneaker hit a patch of blood on the floor.

He didn’t feel woozy. From the amount of blood on the floor, he should have been dizzy. A quick slap of his hand on his shoulder came away with a smatter of red, but not enough to explain the tiny puddles dotting the floor. Staggering to his feet, Sionn grabbed at the chair’s back to use it as a block when he spotted the bloody trickle pouring down the man’s side.

“Miki got a good piece of you, then?” From the man’s uncoordinated charge, Sionn knew he was gambling by inciting the man. Adrenaline might block the man’s pain, but from the fresh gush of blood spreading over his side, it was a risk Sionn was willing to take. Leigh was silent, something Sionn was thankful for. If he could keep the blond’s attention on him, he wouldn’t think about pulling Leigh into the fray, and by taking advantage of the blond’s blood loss and injuries, he could very well get her out alive.

“Well, and me too,” he reminded himself, thinking of the troubled musician he’d left downstairs. “I don’t know what’ll piss Damie off more. Me not coming back or me not coming back with the guitar.”

He didn’t have high hopes of the guitar surviving, but it quickly dropped off his list of worries when the blond seemed to recover his footing and charged him.

The chair came in handy, and Sionn swung it, spearing at the man’s side with its legs. Hooking an end into the man’s wound, Sionn dug in, using his weight to push his makeshift weapon into the blond’s bloody ribs. The scream he ripped from the blond’s mouth was nearly as satisfying as one of Damien’s kisses, and he shoved again, slamming the chair leg until he felt something beneath the man’s skin give.

“I should go back and fucking gut that bitch.” The blond spat onto the floor, adding to the bloody mess. His saliva was a pink froth, and Sionn wondered how the man was even standing. Clutching at his side, the man stumbled past Leigh, his eyes glazed over with pain. He pawed at the dining table, searching for something to use among the metal objects scattered there.

“Miki’s what… almost thirty or forty pounds smaller than you?” Sionn taunted the blond, but he kept his eyes to the ground, looking for the knife he’d seen fly out of the man’s hand. “Scared of facing someone your own size then, arsehole?”

A flash of metal caught his attention, and he edged toward a small table he’d set near the loft’s entrance. Used mostly as someplace he tossed his keys, Sionn hoped he was looking at a blade and not some spare change he’d thrown into an oak bowl Kane’d discarded as junk. The light from a picture window above the side table shone down on the blade when the sun broke free of a passing cloud, the seeping glow creeping down the gap between the tabletop and the wall.

His sigh of relief when he saw it was the actual knife could only have been called orgasmic, and Sionn tossed the chair at the man’s head, then dove for the table. He hit the smooth floor hard, skidding forward on its polished surface before slamming into a messy pile against the elevator doors. Fumbling around under the table, Sionn nicked his fingertip on the blade’s edge before he could find the handle. His fingers were slick with a smear of blood, and the wooden grip slipped around in his palm a bit, but he didn’t dare take his eyes off the blond man across the room.

Especially since the man came up from his weapons hunt with a small hatchet and an evil, sadistic grin.

Sionn wedged his foot against the wall to give himself leverage, spun around, then flopped over and pushed himself up onto his hands. Getting his legs under him and his body up off the floor were his first priority, especially since the blond had spotted him. A feral hunger seemed to take over the other man, and Sionn knew if he didn’t get up off the floor, he was going to be deader than the skewered man sitting in his dining room.

His shoulder hurt, a small enough pain to distract, but a steady pound of raw anxiety shot through his veins, and the pain faded into the background. Drawing his knee up, he anchored his other foot on the floor. Sionn felt his thigh muscle bulge along the seam of his scar, and then the telltale seize of a cramp bit into his leg, dropping him back to the floor.

Rage mottled the blond’s face, flushing it an even darker hue than Sionn thought was possible, considering the map work of bruises on his skin. The man’s arms windmilled, and he slid through the bloody smears on the floor, nearly losing his balance again when he tried to break into a run. He slapped his hand on the table, regained his balance, and twisted back around, then kicked his loafers off. With his feet clad in dry trouser socks, he began to pick his way across the floor, warily avoiding the larger spills as he headed to the elevator doors.

“Do you know what I’m going to enjoy the most, Murphy?” The thickened Southern twang of the man’s voice brought Sionn’s head up. He’d heard a whisper of it on the edges before, but something dark and primal resurfaced in the blond’s eyes, wiping away any polish he might have lacquered over his manners. “I think I’m going to enjoy carving off pieces of you and feeding them to your boy. The thought of him dying from choking to death on a piece of your meat makes me a very happy man inside. A
very
happy man.”

The chair Sionn had flung at him was within reach of the blond’s hatchet, and he buried its head in the wooden back. Splinters flew when he jerked it loose, and the long plank split, the crack continuing down to its punctured seat. The knife lodged in the chair was gone, loosened in the fracas, but Sionn spotted its handle near Leigh’s feet. Making a face at her, he jerked his chin down, and she craned her neck, nodding frantically, then brought her foot down on the blade to hide it.

“Good girl,” Sionn muttered to himself. His leg wasn’t giving him an inch. It ached and pulled as he fought to get up. The wall’s rough brick surface dug into his hand, tearing at his skin, but he continued to drag himself up, hooking his fingers into the thin lines of grout for leverage. His nails scraped at the gritty mortar, tearing chunks of skin from his fingertips, but he kept himself focused on the man stalking him.

“You got a name, loser?” The knife was getting more slippery, and Sionn risked switching hands long enough to wipe his palms. “Or did they just call you son growing up? I hear people do that sometimes when they’ve given birth to a piece of shite like you.”

“Ya’ll fucking smug now, Murphy,” the blond sneered. “I was going to use a gun, you know? Thinking that maybe I should make it quick, but after playing Duck Hunt with you, I want this to
hurt
. And that shit-eating grin of yours is going to be the first thing I take off.”

From where Sionn stood, taking off his loafers wouldn’t do the man any good. The cleaning crew he’d hired seemed to have taken their job very seriously. The wood floor had enough wax on it that he could take a scraper to it and make candles from what he pulled up. Clad in trouser socks, the blond was having a hard time walking a straight line, his feet slipping out from underneath him after every step.

“Should I stand really still for you, boyo?” he tossed back. “Or do you want me to be turning around so you can sneak up on me like you did to Miki? Is that the kind of man you are? Going after the weak like Damie’s mother because you aren’t man enough to take me?”

Something in Sionn’s face must have infuriated the blond because his demeanor shifted, going cold and still. Straightening up, the blond drew himself up to his full height and looked down his craggy nose at Sionn, nostrils flaring with his ripening temper. Glancing down at the hatchet, the man’s upper lip curled derisively, and he tossed it aside, sending the axe head flying through one of the windows facing the sidewalk. The glass shattered, pebbling outward into a shower of sparkling bits, shards spewing out with the hatchet as it tumbled down to the busy street below.

“Man enough? I’ll be man enough for you, Murphy.” The blond’s footsteps shook the wood planking when he stomped carefully forward. His fists were enormous chunks of bone and sinew, meaty and drawn white over his knuckles when he worked his fingers to loosen them up. “I’m going to be man enough to tear you apart with my bare fucking hands.”

At some point in his life, the man once had speed. Enraged, his anger fueled a burst of power to rain down on Sionn like an unholy fire called up by a sadistic demon, because the blond suddenly broke loose, churning his legs in a powerful thrust.

Unable to straighten his leg, Sionn could only seat himself against the wall and angle the knife up, hoping he could get in a good hit before the man’s greater weight overpowered him. The light coming from the window illuminated the man’s wild features, bleaching out his pale flesh until it was nearly alabaster around his vividly bruised skin. Then the light turned to darkness as the man’s bulk swallowed up the sun pouring through the windows and he slammed into Sionn’s crouched-over body.

For a moment, Sionn thought the crack he heard was his own spine giving way beneath the man’s muscled form, but when he toppled, a length of hard wood was shoved up into his back, and some small part of his brain caught sight of a lion-footed table leg spinning up into the air. The blond got lucky, and his hands slipped under Sionn’s arms, locking down on Sionn’s windpipe before he could take a good stab.

Amid the crash of wood and the brutal dig of the windowsill against his body, Sionn’s brain overloaded. He knew hurt. He just couldn’t pinpoint which of the pains coursing through him were important to focus on until his lungs began to strain and Sionn realized he wasn’t getting any more oxygen into them.

The man’s strong fingers were closed over his neck, and the air was being choked out of Sionn’s throat, every increment of pressure squeezing just a little more of Sionn’s life out of him. Swallowing, he flailed, hoping to break free, but the blond’s grip was too tight. The adrenaline was leaving him fast, and Sionn pushed out, hoping the knife he had in his hand was good for something. The man was too big, much too big to do anything more than furiously stab upward over and over and hope for the best. Pressed up against the wall, Sionn was trapped, and a thin black veil was beginning to creep up on him, small sparkling lights flashing at the edges of his vision.