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"Don't worry. I'll get you there just fine."
She believed him. "Where are we going?"
"Downtown. He's waiting for you."
Ehlena felt awkward as the door was opened for her, even though she knew it was courtly manners among equals on his part and not anything to do with serving her. She was just out of practice at being attended to by a male of worth.
Jesus, the Bentley smelled good.
While Trez went around and got in behind the wheel, she stroked the fine leather of the seat and couldn't remember feeling anything so luxurious.
And as the car eased out of the alley and down onto the street, she barely felt the potholes that usually left her hanging on to the door handle in taxis. Smooth ride. Expensive ride.
Where were they going?
As a gentle, warm breeze suffused the backseat, that voice message from Rehv played over and over again in her head. Doubt flickered in her mind, like the brake lights of the cars in front of them, going off and on, slowing her everything's-okay roll.
It got worse. Downtown was not a place she knew very well, and she tensed up as they passed the part where the luxury high-rises were. Where she had met Rehv at the Commodore.
Maybe he was taking her out dancing.
Yeah, because you did that without telling the female to wear a dress.
The farther they went down Trade Street, the more she stroked the seat beside her, although not for the feel of it. Things got seedier and seedier, the lineup of all-right restaurants and the offices of the Caldwell Courier Journal giving way to tattoo parlors and bars that looked as if they'd have grizzled drunks on stools and dirty bowls of peanuts at their counters. Then it was the clubs, the loud, flashy kind she never, ever went to because she didn't like the noise, the lights, or the people in them.
As the black-on-black sign for ZeroSum came into view, she knew they were going to stop in front of it, and her heart dropped into her lower gut.
Strangely, she had the same reaction she'd had to seeing Stephan in the morgue: This can't be right. This can't be happening. This is not how things are supposed to be.
The Bentley didn't pull up in front of the club, though, and for a moment hope flared.
But of course. They went into the alley on the far side, stopping at a private entrance.
"He owns this club," she said in a dead voice. "Doesn't he."
Trez didn't touch the question, but he didn't have to. As he came around and opened the door for her, she sat frozen stiff in the back of the Bentley, staring at the brick building. Absently, she noted that there was grime dripping down its flank from the roof, and crud splashed up on it from the ground. Tarnished. Dirty.
She thought of standing at the foot of the Commodore and staring upward at all the sparkling-clean glass and chrome. That was the facade he had chosen to show her.
This one with the filth was what he had been forced to show her.
"He's waiting for you," Trez said gently.
The side door of the club opened wide, another Moorish male appearing. Behind him, everything was dim, but she heard the thumping bass.
Did she really need to see this, she wondered.
Well, she needed to tell Rehv off, that was for sure, assuming this train wreck was going in the direction it appeared to be. And then it dawned on her: If all this was true, she had a bigger problem. She'd had sex...with a symphath.
She'd let a symphath feed from her.
Ehlena shook her head. "I don't need this. Take me h-"
A female appeared, one who was built tough and hard as a male, and not just on the outside. Her eyes were icy cold and utterly calculating.
She came over and leaned into the car. "Nothing is going to hurt you inside here. I swear it."
Whatever-the hurt was already happening, Ehlena thought. She was getting chest pains like you would with a heart attack.
"He's waiting," the female said.
What got Ehlena out of the car was her backbone, and not just because it straightened her from a sitting position. The thing was, she didn't run. In all her life, she hadn't run from the hard stuff, and she was not starting now.
She walked in through the door and knew for sure that she was somewhere she wouldn't ever choose to be. Everything was dark, and the music banged into her ears like fists, and the smell of too much hot skin made her want to plug her nose.
The female led the way, and the Moors flanked Ehlena, their huge bodies carving a path through a human jungle she had no wish to be a part of. Waitresses dressed in tight black uniforms carried around endless variations on alcohol, and half-nude women rubbed up against men in suits, and every person Ehlena passed had eyes that were looking somewhere else, as if whatever they'd ordered or whoever was in front of them couldn't satisfy them.
She was led over to a reinforced black door, and after Trez spoke into his wristwatch, the thing opened and he stood to the side-as if he expected her to walk right in, like it was just someone's living room.
Yeah...not.
Staring into the darkness beyond, she saw nothing but a black ceiling and black walls and a shiny black floor.
But then Rehvenge stepped into her line of sight. He was exactly as she knew him to be, a big male dressed in a sable duster who had mohawked hair and amethyst eyes and a red cane.
He was, however, a total stranger.
Rehvenge stared at the female he loved and saw on her pale, strained face exactly what he had sought to put there.
Revulsion.
"Will you come in?" he said, needing to finish the job.
Ehlena glanced over at Xhex. "You're security, right?" Xhex frowned, but nodded. "Then you're coming in with me. I don't want to be alone with him."
As her words hit, Rehv might as well have been sliced through the throat, but he showed no reaction as Xhex came forward and Ehlena followed.
The door shut and the music was buffered away and the silence was as loud as a scream.
Ehlena looked at his desk, on which he'd deliberately left twenty-five thousand dollars in cash and a brick of cocaine that was wrapped in cellophane.
"You told me you were a businessman," she said. "Guess it was my fault for assuming it was legitimate."
All he could do was stare at her-his voice had left him, his shallow breath nothing that could sustain words. The only thing he could do, as she stood stiff and angry before him, was memorize her, from the way her strawberry blond hair was pulled back to her toffee-colored eyes to her simple black coat to the way she kept her hands in her pockets, as if she didn't want to touch a thing.
He didn't want this to be how he remembered her, but as it was the last time he would see her, he couldn't help but focus on every detail.
Ehlena's eyes flipped from the drugs and the cash back to his face. "So it's true? Everything your ex-girlfriend said."
"She is my half sister. And yes. Everything."
The female he loved took a step back from him, fear bringing her hand out of her pocket and up to her throat. He knew exactly what she was thinking of: him feeding from her vein, them being naked and alone in his penthouse. She was recasting the recollection, coming to terms with the fact that it hadn't been a vampire at her neck.
It had been a symphath.
"Why did you bring me down here?" she said. "You could have just told me over the phone-no, never mind. I'm going home now. Don't ever contact me again."
He bowed slightly and choked out, "As you wish."
She turned away and went to stand in front of the door. "Will someone please let me the f**k out of here."
After Xhex reached over and opened the way to freedom, Ehlena all but bolted away from him.
As the door shut, Rehv locked it with his mind and stood there, where she had left him.
Ruined. He was utterly ruined. And not because he was turning himself and his body over to a sadistic sociopath who was going to enjoy every minute of torturing him.
When his vision clouded with red, he knew it wasn't his bad side coming out. Not a chance. He'd pumped enough dopamine in his veins over the last twelve hours to choke a horse, because otherwise he didn't trust himself to let Ehlena go. He'd needed to cage his bad side one last time...so he could do the right thing for the right reason.
So, no, this red wasn't going to be followed by flat vision and sensation returning all over his body.
Rehvenge took one of the handkerchiefs his mother had ironed out of the inside of his suit jacket and pressed the folded square beneath his eyes. The bloodred tears leaching out of him were for so much more than just Ehlena and himself. Bella had lost her mother no more than forty-eight hours ago.
