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I raise my face slowly to her eyes. She holds my stare, probably searching for lust. And she finds it there. Bloodlust.
“If Marius takes what is mine,” I growl, “then maybe I should take what is his as a bargaining chip.”
As I start rising to my feet Priest slides between us, slowly and silently like a viper.
Kelly just stares as if daring me to do it. To lay a hand on her. Maybe even to hurt her.
“You should go,” Priest tells her, his voice carrying the calm I know foretells violence. “I’ll take care of this.”
Kelly gets off my desk with a nasty-ass grin and walks aways backwards. If she could, she’d stick around to watch this. A showdown between Priest and I would be a once in a lifetime opportunity.
But Priest rarely allows spectators. Never witnesses.
I’m different in that regard. I like sending messages in the form of burn wounds on a deserving victim’s body, but not today. I don’t want to hurt Priest, and I’m not going to enjoy it, so I’d prefer to at least not humiliate him.
Kelly pouts.
“I’m sorry, Zayne. I really do think it’s a pity, you know? You’re such a beautiful specimen, I hope Priest here doesn’t damage you too much.” Then, with a hungry stare, “I always wanted to see your legendary scars, but I guess I’ll have to be patient just a little while longer.” She runs her tongue over her upper lip like a lascivious she-wolf, and finally exits the room, her men following in her wake.
“You too,” Priest addresses to my own men.
They fidget, and some consider protesting, but I signal them to do as told.
“So this is it,” I mutter. “This is the day when we finally go at each other.” We both knew this was coming. It was only a matter of when. Priest and I have been working together since we were teenagers, and we haven’t always agreed on things, but I have to say, this doesn’t make me happy.
I don’t know when I started caring. Whether it was the night when they threw us together in a cold basement along with twenty other fucked-up boys, or when I first caught a glimpse of him kneeling in front of a cross, splitting his own flesh with a whip.
“That night in the basement,” he says, “I wouldn’t have survived if it weren’t for you.”
My eyebrows take a dive. This isn’t where I expected the conversation to go. Hell, I didn’t expect conversation at all.
“Yes, you would have,” I say in a softer tone, matching his. “You were the strongest one there.”
The memory unfurls in my head of the ward before he closed the grates. “There’s one thing all of you sorry bastards have in common,” he said. “You’re pieces of shit that fuck up the world like a disease. This one here–” He kicked me. “He kidnaps teenage boys, no older than himself, and tortures them in an abandoned warehouse. And this one.” He kicked the guy next to Priest. “He raped his own mother’s boyfriend. Drug him in the street and fucked him in the ass in front of his mates, saying that’s what he gets for beating up his crackwhore mother. Then he tracked down the witnesses and did the same to them, one by one, before he sold them all as sex slaves to a fucking satanist sect.” Then he looked to Priest–but didn’t dare kick him. “This one is a piece of work. Probably nastier than all of you bundled together. Pray to whatever heathen gods you all believe in that he doesn’t have a fit tonight, or you might die a very ugly death–just like you deserve.” Then his hateful glare swept over all of us. “Other than that, you’re all in fucking luck. You possess a series of traits that lift you above common men.” Then, darker, “Above common criminals.”
“My body would have probably pushed through it,” Priest says. “Hell knows it had sustained worse. But my soul...” He shakes his head, ever so slightly. “My soul would have decided to end it.”
My frown deepens. “Isn’t suicide a mortal sin?”
“It is. If you still have a soul.”
“But then...why?” To say that I’m confused would be an understatement.
“Watching you fall in love with that woman. It changed things.” I’ve never heard Priest sound this soft. Never, in fifteen fucking years.
“There’s no denying that you’re one sick, vile bastard,” he says with what could pass for a smile. “So much of a bastard that I didn’t think you had one good bone in your body. But you weren’t born a monster.”
“You weren’t either,” I say. Priest huffs.
“Yeah, I’ll entertain that possibility now that I’m going against the fucking Order to make sure you get the girl.” He regards me for a few moments with something that resembles affection. I’ve seen this gaze before, in the eyes of boys when they stepped in to protect their younger brothers in the high school yards where I stalked my victims. If one of the bullies hurt any one of them, I’d make his experience at the warehouse particularly painful.
“Why her?” he asks, genuine curiosity in his voice. “What is it about Sirenna Miller that cracked your stone heart?”
“She’s the sweetest poison,” I reply. “A narcotic that made me feel something good for the first time in my whole damn life. Then it made me feel something exquisite. Soon, she entered my fucking bones, and now–” I take a deep breath. “Now I’m hooked. Do I deserve her? Fuck knows I don’t. A woman who made it in the big city, and then found the inner greatness to renounce herself for the benefit of another... Nobody deserves her.” I shake my head. “Especially not that piece of shit Joseph. But me, I would put the world at her feet, give her the place that she deserves. And I will be her guardian angel. I will deliver punishment to anyone who hurts her.”
There’s so much more I could say, but I need to stop. Sirenna is out there and, with Joseph free and The Order after her, she needs me. Declan did a good job of covering her tracks, but not good enough. She must have lingered too long on a link or a location he sent her. Even just a few seconds were enough for me to track her down, even if nothing in my face betrayed that when Kelly was still here.
“Why do you think she left you?” Priest asks quietly, aware of the fact that he’s treading on thin ice. He’s not afraid of provoking me, but apparently, he’s not fond of twisting the knife in my wounds. “I could have sworn that she was in love with you, too.”
