Page 76 of Soul Redeemed

She wouldn’t.

Still, it didn’t keep her from flashing to the only place she could think to go, where she wouldn’t hurt an innocent. A place she could sate the craving, but one she loathed to return to, packed with low lives and human scum.

Faeria club.

*

Ava opened her eyes to the black scribblings scrawled across the bathroom wall. Suck cock stood out as the most legible, and she sighed. Ryke had sometimes sent her to the club, when he’d been too lazy to pick up a female on his own. Whomever she’d nabbed there probably had some questionable background. Mostly drug addicts, prostitutes, deadbeat moms. Not that they’d deserved to die, but Ryke would’ve been picking teenage girls off the cheerleading squad, had she not done his scouting for him.

She pushed to a stand, still wearing the shorts and tank from earlier. Even with her pasty white skin, she’d no doubt be a magnet in a place like Faeria.

Without sparing herself a glance in the mirror, afraid of catching a baby killer staring back at her, she exited the bathroom. At just four in the evening, the bar hadn’t yet picked up, but there were enough patrons to for her seek out her next meal. Glutting on the asshole alcoholics might keep her hunger in check.

Scanning the bar, she set her gaze on a male who sat off toward the back of the area. Balding, with a crown of greasy tufts of hair, he watched the crowd behind from his spectacles, while sipping what might’ve been soda. Something about him screamed creepy, though, and the longer she stared, the more she picked up on the aura of sins that wafted across the room.

“Rapist, or pedophile, for sure,” she muttered, sauntering across the room.

Didn’t take long for the asshole to perk up and shift in his seat, the quicker she closed the space between them.

Before she got close, though, pressure hit her throat, tightening its grip, and Ava halted in her tracks, hands flying to her neck where something dug into her windpipe.

“Well, hello, pretty lady.”

She recognized the voice.

Xander.

The cold steel of Diablis tautened the more she tugged, ensuring a snug fit.

“Hey, let her go.” As the male in the booth shimmied up to a stand, Xander came from behind her, his towering presence suddenly shrinking her. Eyes wide, the male scrambled back into his seat.

Coming around front of her brought Xander’s shit-eating grin within punching distance, and Ava swung out at him, missing the mark as he dodged her.

“I’m not the Fallen angel! I’m Ava!”

“Sure. You were Ava back at the mansion, too. The real Ava wants her face back.”

“I am the real Ava!”

“Well, real Ava, you’re coming with me, regardless, and we’ll sort this out back in my chambers.” Gripping her elbow, he led her back through the bar, down the hallway toward the bathrooms.

“What the hell are you doing here?” She jerked her arm to break his grip, and growled at the futility of trying to fight him.

“Well, for a while there, I was hoping for a goddamn miracle, and poof! You showed up as though I deserved that shit.”

Coming to a halt in front of the emergency exit he’d led her to, she tugged at the chain tethered to her throat. “If you don’t let me go, I’ll fucking scream right here.”

Xander swung around and shrugged his shoulders. “Go ahead. I already let the owner know why I’m here. He knows I’m picking up a crafty female who’s being hunted by the Sentinels, and I warned him to stay the fuck back if he wants to keep both his dick and his bar intact.”

“How the hell did you even know about this place?”

“Lyric.”

Holy shit, Ava hadn’t heard that name in forever. They’d been good friends while she’d dated Ryke—one of the only females Ava had ever bothered to form a relationship with. “What about Lyric?”

“She ran into you the other night. Ring any bells?”

“No. Because I was with Calix the other night.”