“What happened?” I jumped out of Darius’s lap and bolted for the front door, taking in the scene. Ronan and Asher were wrecked, bandaged in some places and bruised in others, their eyes red with exhaustion.
Ronan smiled when he saw me, but it was thin and lifeless, and it didn’t last. “We got jumped on a delivery to the club last night. About a dozen guys crept up on us.”
“They attacked on Black Ruby turf?” Darius rose from the couch, incredulous. “Have they gone mad?”
“Not mad at all, actually,” Asher said, kicking off his boots. We followed him into the kitchen, where he rifled through the freezer for a bag of frozen peas and applied them to a nasty-looking bruise on his jaw. “Pretty sure it was strategic on their part.”
“They’re sending a message,” Ronan said. “They would’ve killed us otherwise. A dozen of them against two of us? We didn’t stand a chance.”
I touched my fingers to his eyebrow, just below a crudely-stitched gash. “Looks like they tried their best.”
Ronan took my hand and brought it to his mouth, pressing a kiss to my palm. His own hand was bandaged, the sight of it igniting a flash of anger inside me. God, how I longed for the day when I’d have full control over my magic. When I could cast a simple tracking spell, find whoever did this to the man I loved, and bring them to their knees in agony.
“It gets worse,” Ash said. “The vamps were rollin’ with at least four humans.”
“Were?” Darius’s voice went up an octave. “Tell me you’re speaking in the past tense because you talked the humans out of their poor choice in friends, convinced them that vampires don’t actually exist, and sent them home safely.”
Neither demon said a word.
Darius closed his eyes, his face a mask of calm I knew he wasn’t feeling. Through gritted teeth, he said, “You killed four humans? Outside my club?”
“Wasn’t us,” Ash said. “The vamps batted us around first, then let the humans take shots, knowing we wouldn’t do more than throw a few punches at them. When they’d had enough of that, the vamps pulled a Judas.”
“Did they turn them?” Darius asked.
“Nope.” Ash readjusted the peas on his jaw, wincing at the movement. “Staked ‘em. We tried to help, but the dudes bled out fast.”
“They’re setting you guys up,” I said. “Vamps don’t carry stakes. They want people to think you guys did it.”
“No,” Darius said. “Notpeople. The bloody Fae Council.”
My blood ran cold. If the Council decided to do an inquiry, and Ronan and Asher were found guilty of murdering four humans, they’d be imprisoned. Worse, if the fae felt like making an example of them.
“This is fucked eight ways from Sunday,” Ronan said, grabbing two beers from the fridge and passing one to Ash. I helped myself to Ronan’s, forcing him to get another. My nerves couldn’t handle this conversation otherwise.
“After patching ourselves up at my place last night,” Ronan continued, “we spent all day today trying to suss out the situation, see who was behind the attack. Nobody’s talking—not the other vamps, not the fae, not the shifters.”
“The blood slaves might know something,” Ash said, “but we didn’t dare approach them. The scene was still too hot tonight to risk it.”
“Does Emilio know?” Darius asked.
“His crew showed up this afternoon,” Ronan said. “We didn’t make contact. We didn’t want anyone connecting him to us and making trouble.”
I sat on one of the high-backed stools at the center island and took a few swigs of beer, trying to stay calm. Ronan was right—this was fucked.
“I don’t understand why the humans got involved in the first place,” I said. “Were these guys recruiting?”
“Always.” Darius began to pace across the kitchen, his shoulders tense, his mind clearly working overtime. “There exists a subset of humans who believe that being a vampire is a lifestyle choice—something no more significant than deciding whether to live in the city or the country. They don’t realize that for most of us, it was never a choice. They idolize and idealize us based on Hollywood’s notion of our immortality, knowing nothing of the pain, the isolation…”
Heat flared in his eyes, and for a moment he seemed to forget where he was, lost in the torment of his own thoughts—thoughts I could only begin to guess at.
After a beat, I finally caught his eye and mouthed, “Are you okay?”
He narrowed his eyes as if the question confused him, then looked away.
“Many of themwantto be turned,” he continued, “thinking it will solve their human problems or elevate them to some special status they couldn’t otherwise achieve. Unscrupulous vampires take advantage, preying on desperate humans with promises to turn them and help them through the transition once they’ve proven themselves.”
“Sounds like a gang initiation,” I said.
