And he was addressing every single one of the gawking clients when he said, “If you don’t stop staring, I’ll beat you till you’re sorry.”
Most of the men lowered their heads or took a sudden interest in the pictures on the walls. But one of the wolves getting a sleeve done muttered, “She shouldn’t dress like that then.”
“I beg your pardon?” Darien replied in a low and lethal voice, black swallowing his irises and the whites of his eyes. The hairs on Loren’s arms prickled. When the wolf didn’t provide him with an answer, Darien smirked and said, “Yeah, I didn’t think so.”
Loren couldn’t help but stare at Darien in shock as he turned back around to face her, a smug smile ghosting his lips.
Mistaking her surprise for confusion, he told her, “You can dress however you want to dress, and scum like them shouldn’t think it means you’re serving yourself to them on a silver platter.”
Loren was speechless. And the fact that she was still staring at him as if he’d sprouted horns seemed to concern him a little.
He shifted his eyes from side to side in confusion. “What?” he asked quietly.
Loren was shaking her head. “I’m starting to think you’re less of a devil than you paint yourself to be.”
Darien gave her the kind of crooked smile that made the world tilt beneath her feet. “Sweetheart, I am notadevil. I amthedevil. Don’t start getting the wrong idea.”
Despite the statement, she felt…warm and fuzzy inside, like there was a sun glowing inside her, melting a part of herself that she hadn’t realized was frozen.
“Of course not,” she said politely.
He didn’t look like he believed her.
—
Darien didn’t like the way the men inside the tattoo parlour had looked at Loren, didn’t like the way their dark gray auras undulated like restless spirits, flickering here and there with the shade of red that spelled lust. It was enough to know what they were thinking without them ever having to say those thoughts aloud. The nasty sting of their arousal was a sharp and unwelcome odor that knifed through his airways and made him want to gag, made him want to do…bad things. Very bad things.
And although he himself had been caught staring too many times to count, the way he viewed Loren was so much different. If he’d ever thought for one second that he was making her genuinely uncomfortable with his flirting and teasing, he would’ve stopped. Wouldn’t have ever done it again. But the men in here didn’t care.
Kyle’s return to the desk was a welcome distraction. He joined Darien and Loren on their side, set an open book of tattoo designs before them, and jabbed a finger on the illustration of a phoenix head. “Look familiar?”
Darien studied the side profile of the extinct bird. “Looks like the same one to me,” he murmured. It was to Loren that he said, “What do you think, Rookie?”
She stepped closer to the desk, closer to Darien, and studied the tattoo. “Yes,” she croaked. She cleared her throat. “It looks like the same one.”
“How’d you get this?” Darien asked Kyle.
“Reggie had two clients in here a few hours ago who brought in this crafty design and asked to have it put…” He gave a pointed look at the tattoo on Darien’s own neck. “Well, you get the picture. Lucky for you, not every one of our clients is aware that our magical little friend here,” he poked the book, “makes a copy of every design my artists ink onto their clients.”
“Who were they?” Darien asked, keeping his tone low—lower than what most immortals could pick up on. With the buzzing of the tattoo machines, his words would be no more than a hum to the other people in the room. “Reggie’s clients—who were they?”
Kyle snapped the thick tome shut and tucked it under a beefy arm. “I don’t think I need to explain to you why we don’t take names. And we also don’t have cameras for the same reasons, so don’t bother asking, my friend.” Right. Although Kyle ran a tattoo shop, he also occasionally dabbled in the contraband market. Nothing as dangerous as someone like the Butcher but could still land a person several years on the inside. “What Icantell you is that they were lamiae-hellseher halfies.” Half-vampire, half-hellseher.
Darien felt the need to peel his skin off as thoughts began to race in his head, as he went through what Cain had told him, as he sorted through every half-vampire, half-hellseher in this city who was dangerous enough to be welcomed into some secret cult.
“Tell me what they looked like,” Darien demanded.
“Twins,” Kyle said. “A guy and a girl. Both had black hair, electric-green eyes—”
“Fuck,” Darien snapped. Despite that he’d kept his tone muted, Loren started.
Kyle began to ask if Darien knew them, but his question was cut short as a hoarse male scream rippled through the parlour. More than one person was startled by the noise that abruptly broke off into a gurgle. Machines were shut off, and conversation ceased.
Darien pinned Kyle with a steely gaze. “Where’s Reggie?” he demanded. “Did you actuallyseehis clients leave the building before you called us?”
Kyle’s mouth opened and closed like a fish. Darien didn’t have time to wait for him to find words—besides, the shock on his face told him everything he needed to know.
He made for the corridor, heading in the direction the scream had come from, Loren right behind him.
