Fate Fallen, page 7
part #3 of The Gallows Series Series
She shrugged. “Just about anything. Your choice.”
Since he really didn’t think she meant that, he didn’t ask for more Monkey Brains. He ordered Pina Coladas since it was the only girly drink he could think of. He was going to blame Sarah’s early morning singing for that.
They found seats easily enough so soon after opening. The place would likely only fill up a couple of hours before it was due to close. The instant he put the drinks on the table his senses alerted him of something non-human. He hadn’t closed them down after he’d checked Selina out and he was glad he hadn’t. The earthy musk was unmistakable. There was a wolf in the night club. Zeroing in on the scent, he picked up the trail.
Selina grabbed her drink and stared up at his good side. “What?”
“I’ll be right back.”
Wolves didn’t mix with humans. That meant a bitten wolf or it meant trouble. The possibility of either made him wish for his coat and the dagger in its pocket. He was going to have to improvise if there was an attack. He picked up the empty pint glass he’d stranded before.
The wolf was somewhere past the dance floor near the hallway with the toilets signs. He stalked over, ignoring Dev and Selina’s slutty pal getting up close and personal on the dance floor. Some guy grabbed his sleeve as he made to head across the dance floor. He glowered at the guy.
“No glasses on the dance floor.”
He took the long way instead of telling the guy to get bent. Getting kicked out would only make it easier for the wolf to turn the place into an abattoir. The hallway was dark, the arrows showing the way down to the toilets lit up neon yellow on the walls. The earthy musky scent trailed down that stairway, the wolf was down there. He’d smash the glass when he got closer. Right now he wanted to try for quiet.
A prickling at the back of his neck made him turn. His enhanced eyesight kicked in. There was nothing hiding in the shadows. He fought off the weird feeling that had just crept up on him in the dark, but it didn’t want to shift. The dull throbbing in his head came on an instant before his knees gave way under him. The pint glass fell from his hand, smashing into shards in front of him. He closed his eyes against the spinning hallway, slumping sideways into the wall right before he lost consciousness. The last thing his senses told him was the wolf was coming closer.
The night club felt different when he pulled himself to his feet. His head ached, a burning sensation at the back of his skull that was hot enough to make him reach back and check for blood. His hand came back clean, and all he’d felt back there was the messy tangle of hair he probably should have brushed earlier. With a groan, he checked his pockets for pain killers.
The wolf! He remembered what he’d been doing and opened his senses to check for the scent again. The ache in his skull pulsed, pain exploding from the heat. He closed his eyes and steadied himself against the wall. He had to concentrate, to get past the pain and figure out what was making his head hurt like hell. The unmistakable scent of fey magic filled the air, thick and endless. There was no trail he could track; the air was simply saturated with it.
He shut his senses down, sighing in relief at his headache easing off. He couldn’t understand it. He couldn’t smell the wolf he’d been sure was there moments before. Something was badly wrong.
He pushed away from the wall and walked out into the night club. The scene laid out before him froze him to the spot. The music wasn’t banging like it had been before; it was barely audible over the noises being made by the occupants of the club. Shaun knew he must have Sarah’s sicker horror flicks to blame for what he thought he was seeing. He could barely take it in. The floor ran thick with blood. Victims were torn apart in front of him, shrieking and protesting all the way. Strange demon-like creatures with hell-fire eyes tortured the humans in the room. Amidst the horror, couples were performing various sexual acts on each other, speckled with blood yet caught up in their own ecstasy and seemingly oblivious to the nightmare going on around them.
Shaun blinked. Clubbing was his idea of hell, but this was taking that concept way too far.
He could tell out of all the lovers, victims and torturers not a single one of them was a fairy. Yet the magic soaking the atmosphere was entirely fey. He didn’t know what to make of this. It was messed up in the extreme.
‘This is your future, Shaun.’
The whisper seemed to come from inside his head. He shuddered at the thought of something getting inside his head. He backed up into the hallway to the toilets again, closing the door on the disturbing scenery. He tried not to but he kept picturing things that were happening out there.
“None of this is real,” he told himself, feeling a little better for having said it.
‘It will come to pass.’
The second whisper gave him a violent case of the shivers.
“Who the hell are you?”
Laughter echoed through his head. He frowned. The pulsing headache came back on, forceful enough to make him black out.
He blinked. The dark hallway cleared away his weird nightmare. He was lying on the floor where he’d fallen before he passed out and went to fairy hell. That blood-soaked freak-show hadn’t come from his own unconscious thoughts, and he knew it. Someone had gotten inside his head to show him that, they had to have. He shuddered. There was no way he could have thought that shit up on his own.
Shaking it off, he hauled himself up and stretched. His neck ached from the way he’d fallen. He moaned to himself, wondering just how long he’d been out. Suffice it to say it wasn’t like him to fall asleep so suddenly and violently like that. He wondered how likely developing narcolepsy was and decided it wasn’t very. Whatever had knocked him out, he had the feeling it was an external problem. He didn’t like the thought of that. Someone or something had it out for him.
At least his painfully embarrassing night out was about to be cut short. He reminded himself the girl he’d left sitting alone out there wasn’t interested in him anyways, but it didn’t exactly make him feel any better. He turned to head back to the bar, boots crunching over broken glass.
Chapter Eighteen
About fifteen minutes after Ray got called out to a technical emergency at the pub, Sarah’s phone started ringing. The instant worry the late night call instilled in her disappeared when she saw who was calling. In spite of everything, what happened to Ben still felt like her fault. She answered, not sure she would have if Ray had been there.
“What do you want?”
“We need to talk.” He didn’t sound any different, but she knew he’d changed. No one could go through what he had without letting it affect them.
“When?”
“Are you busy right now?”
The quick knocks on the front door made her shiver. “It’s late.”
“I don’t mind if you don’t.”
She ended the call and went to the door. Hesitating to open it, she tried to keep the thoughts in her head straight. It was useless. She couldn’t anticipate what he was going to say before he said anything. Opening the door, she faced him for the first time since she’d set him free.
He looked as good as he had when they’d met, his quick grin emphasised his perfectly sculpted face. His deep brown eyes bored into her intensely. She’d forgotten how easily he’d caught her attention back then. It made her realise how much had changed since that first electric moment.
“Finally,” he breathed, gazing longingly into her eyes.
She took a steadying breath and let him in wordlessly, wondering all the while what the hell she thought she was doing. Her sword was within reach, hanging on the coat rack. She glanced at it as she closed the door, hoping against hope it wasn’t going to come down to that.
“You have no idea how much I’ve missed you.” He sounded like the eager guy she’d met all those months ago at the dance. It was only going to make her painful explanation that much harder.
“I’m sorry, for everything that happened to you,” she began, knowing an apology would never be good enough.
He laughed. “You’re still thinking about that? It was months ago.”
She didn’t know what to say. He took a step towards her and she moved back.
“I remember everything,” he told her, his voice full of conviction.
“You really don’t.” He might have been left with War’s physical memories, but he didn’t know anything about the bond.
“Then tell me,” he invited, moving to lean on the back of the couch.
“It’s complicated,” she said, not wanting to tell him about the bond. She worried that she couldn’t tell him. War’s parting words to her when he’d possessed Dev that final time had been haunting her ever since. The bond hadn’t died when he’d been separated from Ben’s body.
“We’ve got something, Sarah. Why throw that away?”
“We had something,” she corrected, trying not to let the hurt in his eyes get to her. “It’s over. I’m with Ray now.”
He took a breath and pushed away from the couch. “He’s only human.”
Shaun had been right; Ben knew he was something more than he’d been. She felt her face flush. Keeping it from him had seemed like the best thing to do. She should have known he’d find out.
“How…”
“It’s probably better if you don’t know,” he said, coming towards her. She stepped back. He smiled at her. “You realise you’re backed into a corner.”
Her heel knocked against the skirting board. She kept her arms folded and her gaze serious.
“Back off, Ben.”
“That’s not what you were saying before.” He grinned.
She didn’t believe he was stupid enough to think she was just playing around, but the alternative was that he’d lost his mind. “I was never talking to you.”
His grin fell back when he locked eyes with her. “What?”
“I made him go away to give you your body back. You have no idea how hard that was.”
He stared through her, blinking slowly. The information was probably the hardest thing he’d had to process since he’d gotten his body back. She knew he’d hated War for the possession and to go from thinking his memories were his own to knowing they weren’t, it had to sting.
“You’ve got to be shitting me.” There wasn’t even any anger there. He was still in shock.
“It’s a long story, but I’m not.” She felt like a slut. So the bond had pushed her to be intimate, she could have tried harder to ignore the compulsions.
Ben narrowed his eyes, anger starting to pulse through him. “You had feelings for the demon?”
“Everything I felt was for him,” she said, her cheeks burning.
Ben slammed his fist into the wall by her shoulder. He glowered at her as he hauled it back. The brick had cracked where he’d hit it.
“You’re lying,” he said, voice rising. “We had something, I felt it.”
“It’s gone,” she told him, setting her jaw. She didn’t want to have to fight him, but she would if it came to it.
He stared at her. She tensed for his next move. Killing him was something she’d been trying to avoid from the instant he’d been turned. If he attacked her now it was all for nothing.
“I’m sorry, Ben. Believe me, I never wanted any of this.”
He turned away. “I held on for you. The demon… he tried to make me part of him. I fought it. I believed you would get me out of there. I thought…”
He sounded like he might be crying. She wanted to comfort him. The blame for his turning rested squarely on her shoulders. She never should have gotten him involved. She never should have led him on in the first place. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s too late for sorry,” he said bitterly, leaving without looking at her. The door shut with a bang.
She slumped back against the wall. The damn bond she’d made had hurt too many people. It was going to haunt her for the rest of her life. She still couldn’t see where she could have gone back and done something differently. She’d gotten what she’d needed from it eventually, and that had helped her give Ben his body back. The justification didn’t make her feel any better, but maybe she didn’t deserve to.
She wasn’t sure how long she stood there, staring into space and refusing to think about what she might end up having to do. Eventually the front door opened. Ray came in and frowned at her.
“Hey, what’s… did you do that?” He’d spotted the dent in the wall then.
“Ben stopped by. I think he took the hint this time,” she said, pushing away from the wall. “What was wrong at the pub?”
“Turned out to be a frayed cable. You talked to him?” He was only slightly freaking out. She could sense his worry, but it wasn’t quite running rampant.
“He knows I’m not interested.”
“Took him long enough to work that out. Are you okay?”
She nodded. For some stupid reason she wanted to cry. He put an arm around her and she ended up sobbing onto his t-shirt while he hugged her. He didn’t say anything, he just held her while she let it all out and pulled herself back together again. When she moved back and wiped at her wet face, he kept an arm around her.
“Do you want to talk about it?” He wasn’t digging for answers; he was just worried about her.
She knew beyond a doubt he’d be okay with it if she didn’t want to tell him what happened. “It was just awful,” she said, barely getting her voice above a whisper. Clearing her throat, she moved away to grab a tissue out the box on the phone table. “I really hurt him.” She’d done worse than hurt him. She’d messed up Ben’s entire life. He’d never be the same guy he’d been when they’d met.
“He’ll be okay.”
She couldn’t be as sure about that as Ray sounded. Ben’s veiled threat about him only being human flashed through her head. She couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t try to hurt Ray. Now that he knew Ray wasn’t the problem he might back off, but she wasn’t entirely certain about that. His anger had been potent. It would need a release. The dent he’d left in the wall was only the beginning.
“I think you should train with me,” she told him. The snap decision felt right.
Ray smiled. “I get to touch your sword?”
“I was thinking more about stakes.” She’d take him on a vampire run. She was fast enough to protect him until he knew what he was doing. The sooner he got used to killing things, the better.
“Stakes?” His confusion screwed up his nose in the really cute way she had to try not to point out to him. He really hated being called cute.
“I’m going to show you how to kill a vampire.”
Chapter Nineteen
The wolf snuck up on him when Shaun had his hand on the door leading back to the club. Her scent appeared instantly behind him, making him jump. She had to be close to his height, he’d felt her breath on his neck right before she ran her tongue along it. He made a disgusted noise and pulled away. She dug her nails into his sides and held him in place. He was glad he hadn’t let Sarah talk him out of his t-shirt. Her nails felt sharp. He cursed himself for leaving his coat at home though. His dagger would have come in handy right about then.
“Fuck off,” he said, pushing her face back with his hand.
“You smell like a plaything.” She didn’t sound the slightest bit daunted.
“Get bent, lady, and get the fuck off my back.” He pinged at her arm with his other hand.
She moved back, taking a deep breath inwards. “You’re the one.”
“Think again,” he told her, turning to shove her farther away. His hands stopped, partly because he’d been about to touch her flimsily covered chest and partly because of how shockingly good the bitch looked. If the human girl with the devastating smile out there was his type, this wolf was his type times a thousand. She was taller and thinner with thicker, darker hair that tumbled down to cover her breasts. Her face was heart-shaped and her eyes chocolate brown and doe-like. Her skin was a deep bronze that seemed to shimmer in the darkness.
He shook off the attraction and gave her a nasty glare.
“But you are,” she told him. “My pack almost killed you.”
Ah, he thought, that one. “Your pack is gone.”
“But not forgotten,” she said with a smile. Her hand reached out and her fingers were stroking the scar around his left eye before he could react.
“You should be dead,” he told her, not without a hint of threat.
“Maybe,” she said, shrugging and dropping her hand. “I wasn’t there.”
It made her some kind of rogue wolf. Not like his sister’s dumb pet though. This one was born wolf. She wasn’t a slave to her instincts like Ryan was. She was too smart to be purposefully trying to enrage him. It wasn’t like she knew he was unarmed.
“What are you doing here?” he asked as she dropped her hand from his face.
“Nothing important,” she said, making it sound carelessly casual.
“Right then, you won’t mind if I ask you to leave.”
“Were you thinking of any place in particular?” She smiled, coming in close and inhaling deeply at his neck again. She gave a soft little moan on the exhale. He was almost tempted by the death by sexy offer.
“I meant just you. I’m kind of on a date.”
She stepped back with an insulted glower on her exquisitely pretty face.
He had to smile. “Don’t get rejected much, do you?”
“We almost killed you. Don’t forget that.” She stormed off, breaking a hinge on the door in her haste. He left the hallway to check out where she was headed. She disappeared into darkness, but she was stalking off in the right direction to be leaving at least. He breathed a sigh and headed back to his uninterested set-up.
The girl had emptied his glass as well as her own. He wondered how long he’d actually been gone. She was also talking to some other guy, up close and intimately. The guy kissed Selina before she could turn her head. She kissed him back easily. Their rising hormonal responses made him want to retch.
“Okay then,” Shaun muttered, taking it as his chance to get the hell out of there.
