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“Son of a bitch,” he muttered, glancing at his hands previously wrapped around the bars and the blood that now stained them.
I licked my lips before grinning, the discomfort the realization was causing him was permeating the air. He willingly got into the cage, and I suspect he imagined he would be able to turn into his demon form and break out.
But not while her blood was on every bar that surrounded him.
It’s interesting, the things I learned in the early days when I was drilling Mike to tell me everything he could about demons and their lives and these rules that they all seemed to instinctually be aware of. Who would have thought demons were capable of love? But not only are they capable, they feel it stronger, with an intensity that would stagger humans. Their lover becomes their weakness long before bonding is even on their mind. If their partner is injured and they smell the blood and the pain, they will be brought to their knees.
And if you draw a circle around a demon with their love’s blood, they can’t step out of it.
So if you take the blood of their love and paint it across the cage’s bars, they are trapped in their human form.
Cade started searching Nikki, shoving up her sleeves, and when he found the needle mark in the crook of her elbow, he roared in rage again, Nikki petting his arm gently as if to control a wild animal. She attempted to hide her own emotions and failed.
“Are you seeing this behavior, Nicola? Are you scared you’ll turn into a monster like him if you bond?”
Nikki shook her head. I could see the movement of her hair that fell across his arm as he tucked her against him. Cade again tightened his grip on her. If he kept that up, he’d squeeze her to death before I had a chance to have my fun. “A monster like you, you mean?” she quipped, pushing Cade’s arm down slightly so she could look me in the eye.
My smile dropped.
“Yes.” My tongue darted out, wetting my suddenly dry lips. “That’s exactly what I mean.”
“It’s none of your fucking business why we aren’t bonded.” Cade growled, turning his head to face me and his eyes flashing with rage. “Fuck off, or I’ll rip your fucking heart out.”
“From inside a cage of her blood?”
He hissed at me, his jaw taut as he contained himself, as if he had a choice, and I regarded him without response. As I moved away to finish setting the traps to contain Mike once he moved in on this building, Mike’s lover boy stirred, groaning and clenching his fingers against the concrete under them.
I smirked to myself.
I’d be dealing with him soon enough.
MIKE
There was a part of me that felt I could talk my way out of this, but Emrick couldn’t be talked into waiting outside when we pulled up next to the remains of his club, Darkside. Ray and Ilsa agreed, reluctantly, to wait, but only when I asked them to keep an eye on the perimeter. While I would have thought Tate would’ve wanted to work alone, he had already secured the help of Earl, and therefore I didn’t trust him not to have hired some random muscle to make things more difficult.
I also didn’t trust Emrick not to fly off the handle. He didn’t strike me as particularly stable, and even walking beside him felt like walking next to a ticking time bomb or an animal that couldn’t be controlled. Ironic that as a demon, I should be concerned about an angel, fallen or not, not to keep control of himself.
Would he disregard Jacob’s safety if there was an opportunity to take down Tate?
The husk of the building was lit, streams of artificial yellow lighting spewing forth from the cracks and holes where the fire had burned out the structure. The mild hum of generators was consistent in the background, and when the sound triggered in my mind the planning that Tate had put into this, I felt another push against the inside of my skin.
My demon wanted out.
I hadn’t satiated its need for violence in too long. I’d lost my outlet, I’d almost lost Jacob, and now I was almost losing control.
The first thing I saw when we turned a corner was the cages planted strategically in what would have been a dance floor. In one, a woman with white-blonde hair was crouched down and curled her hands over her head. She was drenched, the drips from her clothes creating steady ripples in the puddle she stood in—an inch or two of water contained by the bottom of the cage. Standing over her, watching us approach, was Cade, his lips lifted into a snarl. He was also drenched but paying it no mind as he rested a palm on the head of the woman at his feet.
There was another cage, and…
“Jacob!” I cried out, my strangled shout a far cry from the dominating and confident man I thought I was only a week ago. Emrick’s hand shot out and grabbed my arm, and immediately I moved to shake him off, stopping when I heard the chuckle.
Tate stepped into the light, holding a trigger of some kind, wires spilling out and falling to the floor. Opening my mouth to ask, I instead followed the wires with my gaze as they led to the cages, metal and highly conductive, rigged up to send electricity pulsing through the bars.
And straight through the water his victims were standing in.
He’d taken their shoes.
Jacob’s eyes met mine, and the look of utter despair in them shattered my heart. When I moved toward him, Emrick’s grip on my arm tightened, and Tate laughed again.
