Ash to Embers (Courting Shadows) (7 page)

"Were you hitting on our waitress?"

"Why would I do that?"

"Rachel, stop," Bren chided.

Rachel shot him a withering look. "The service here sucks anyway."

"Maybe it's you," Jay put in with an overly polite smile.

"Jay, stop, you stop now. Why don't we all relax and have a good time, okay? Rachel, Sio gets attention, but he's here with us. We're used to it. Sio..." Bren trailed off. "Do your best to keep the pimp juice to a dull roar, okay? Everybody good? Good, now when is this thing supposed to start?"

Right on cue, the lights dimmed and servers spilled from the arena's marble floor as if they were climbing from the pits of hell. Each one carried massive trays laden with brilliantly colored foods in all shapes and sizes. The smell was intoxicating. Issues were forgotten as plates heaped with exotic offerings were set down by lightning quick hands that melted back into the shadows surrounding their booth.

Sio speared something he didn't recognize with a fork that probably cost more than his apartment and stuffed it into his mouth. The only sound from the rest of the table was the frantic clatter of silverware against antique china. He glutted himself until a clap of thunder reverberated through the room, shocking him out of the taste induced stupor. A deep disembodied voice followed suit rumbling in the newly stilled air.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, Honored Guests, and Other. Tonight we bring you ecstasy and agony, a tempting taste of both heaven and hell for your viewing pleasure. Tonight is like many other nights, but begins quite unlike any other. Dearest creatures, we lay before you an offering and a boon. Please welcome your most fearsome hosts Messires Royal and Xavier. Our Lion Tamers."

The air temperature spiked as two men appeared in the arena, phasing into view as if they were part of a heat mirage. The one on the right was lean with white blonde hair that looked too bright in contrast to the angularity of his face and the depth of his tan. The metal in his bottom lip glinted in the low light when he smiled. The guy on the left was a few inches shorter. A slightly stockier, hard muscled dirty blonde with a carefully man-scaped goatee and hair cut for fighting. He had high cheekbones, a strong jaw, and eyes blue enough Sio could see them clearly from fifty feet away. Scars were etched all over the side of his neck and torso as if the guy sat around carving himself on Saturday nights for fun. Both of them were pretty and either one of them looked like a good fight.

"Oh good, Chip'n Dales," Jay said around a mouth full of food.

Sio swallowed. "Nah, I think they'd start out wearing more."

"Shhhhh," Rachel bit out.

"You guys are going to make jokes through this whole thing, aren't you?" Bren asked.

"Yep."

"Pretty much."

Sio shoveled another heap of food into his thrilled pie hole. He choked as a gorgeous, long legged, crouching female came into focus. Holy Christ.

It was HER.

She was better than he remembered. He hadn't been improving through fantasy. And fuck, he'd fantasized a lot. As his hallucination stood and circled the men in the arena, Sio got a good look at her own scars. Three parallel lines slid diagonally across her right cheek, starting underneath her eye. The marks were ugly and oddly appealing, an asymmetry that made the stark way in which she was beautiful more accessible. They turned him on, which was an inappropriate response he wouldn't overanalyze.

She was barely concealed by a strapless shift that fell to her knees. It had slits at both thighs, and only served to accentuate a figure that made him dumb with undiluted lust. The blood in his upper body drained, pooling in his lap, filling his cock until the bastard was beating at his zipper like a battering ram. Sio was light headed and he was hard; so rock solid he could barely think enough to be surprised. He'd wanted a lot of women, but nothing like this.

The choreography of the threesome on stage unfolded with more violence than he'd been anticipating. Showmanship and sensuality distracted from the fight in progress, but not one of the participants was pulling punches. If Sio hadn't spent so much of his spare time brawling he'd have doubted both the spontaneity and the force of the impacts. There was no question though, they were connecting and they were doing it with force. The woman in the arena was rolling out moves he'd never seen before with a wicked precision that came by way of a lifetime of training and a complete disregard for safety.

The bleach blonde with the lip ring and the red breeches grabbed her, dragging her along the ground and up against his body. Sio sucked in a shallow breath, fist clenching, until he bent the fork he'd been holding like a dagger for an indefinite amount of time. He was lucid enough to wish with frightening intensity that it had been the guy's neck.

She smiled, baring her teeth, and Sio's stomach went tight. She elbowed Lip Ring in the face. The dirty blonde with the goatee brandished a dark leather bolo whip from somewhere and wrapped it around her throat, pulling her towards him as she hammered him with vicious maneuvers that lent her the advantage. In a moment of intimate proximity that fucking goatee shrouded mouth descended toward hers and she went rigid.

The room was silent. Sio stumbled to his feet before he could stop himself. He was so cold he was damn near hypothermic. In the periphery he heard someone muttering about the temperature, but he was way too worked up to care. He held his breath, wondering if he was going to embarrass himself by tackling the guy in the middle of the show over a kiss. Shit, probably. He was irrational, completely out of control.

Goatee was seconds from laying claim to her mouth when she head-butted him in the face. Lip Ring blocked her escape and she dropped to the floor and hit him in the knee with a sickening crack. The guy's leg buckled, and he grinned like it was foreplay. Somewhere in the back of his short-circuited brain Sio realized he was moving, hauling ass toward the floor...toward her. She looked up, gaze swinging to meet him and the moment was electric.
Incendiary.

Those amber eyes practically felled him.

She lunged toward him, as the fire between them burned its way through his lungs.
They were almost at the wall when Goatee coalesced behind her, pinning her arms and yanking her backward. Lip Ring was right behind and the son of a bitch buried a thin silver dagger up to the hilt in the side of her neck. The removal sent a bright red flume of arterial blood into the air. It was burning hot and wet, soaking the front of Sio's shirt as he barreled toward the vanishing trio. They dissolved the way they had come in, like a mirage, right in front of him.

He was yelling where he stood by the arena wall. He couldn't hear himself, he knew only because his throat was raw with it. Shit, he couldn't be in here. He was shaking with fury and a boatload of other emotions he wouldn't consider, let alone name. Jay and Bren looked shell-shocked as he stumbled up the stairs past their table.

In the bathroom Sio turned the water up as high as it would go, hoping that the sound would drown out the mad screaming in his head.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" he snapped at his reflection.

His skin ached. He peeled off the sodden fabric of his shirt and instead of running it under the water, on a sick impulse, he brought it to his face and inhaled. The smell was overwhelming, copper sweet, and riddled with undertones that were floral and ozone. The orgasm caught him off guard.

He unzipped a millisecond before debasing himself into his blood covered button down. The release was dazzling. It went on for too long, muddling his nerve endings and branding him soul deep. He panted against the fogged mirror of a foreign men's room and bit back a sob. He didn't do the crying thing, wasn't hard wired for it. Sio'd known he had issues, but this was a whole new arena of psychological damage. The self-loathing bubbling up from his gut like acid. He choked it back down on a choppy inhalation.

They did not ruin you...You are not ruined...

He repeated the silent mantra, willing the tightness in his chest to ease. This wasn't the first time he'd comforted himself after some pathetic, horrific outburst. It was just the first time he couldn't make himself believe. Sio tossed the evidence of his own depravity on the counter and shoved his head in the sink. It was an awkward angle considering how big he was, but it didn't matter. The water was freezing where the icy stream enveloped his skull. The arctic cold felt good, grounding. The door behind him opened and closed. Whatever poor bastard walked in was going to have to deal with him crouching like a half-naked nut job shoved under the faucet.

"I heard you liked to do it in public places."

Rachel's voice sent a dead chill up his spine. Sio didn't lift his head from under the running water, but he did open his eyes, angling his face so he could see her.

"You shouldn't be in here," he said. His throat burned with each syllable.

"It's okay. I locked the door."

Nothing okay about that.

"Then unlock it. I need a couple of minutes."

It was the most abrasive he'd been around a woman in years. He didn't like many people, but he could at least fake decent. She cocked her hip and made a sound in the back of her throat like she was coughing up a hair ball. It was an irritating noise, no matter what woman it was coming out of. Rachel removed a gold foil packet from her purse and tossed it onto the counter next to him.

"Don't you want to thank me for bringing you here? Cause it's amazing and I kind of think I deserve it."

Maybe she was trying to be cute. Maybe she was flirting with him. It didn't matter.

Thank you for showing me what a fucking freak I am.

He shut off the water and grabbed a rolled terry cloth towel from the copper basin on the counter to dry his face before turning around. In that moment, he would have paid money to be able to put his shirt back on. Too late for that though, it was covered in about ten gallons of his own release, and he sure as hell wasn't about to hide himself from her.

He met her hot stare and said the only thing that came to mind.

"Rachel. Get. The fuck. Away from me."

She hadn't gone down that way, but Tian came to screaming. As much as she fought it, she always came back screaming, as if the fabric of her world was tearing itself apart instead of knitting back together. Anyone who waxed ecstatic about the glories of resurrection had never experienced it.

Firm hands held her down to keep her from damaging herself as she bucked against the biting nausea and the pain. Black magic pulsed in the air of the half open circle her body had been laid out in. Her scream, if it could be called that, came out half way between a wet gurgle and a rough high-pitched yowl. Wet cat on a sander.

Xavier was whispering something soft and rhythmic into her right ear as he held her pinned to his body. She knew the language of the angels when she heard it, but was relieved she couldn't understand him. To do so would have been uncomfortable for them both, and Tian would take the small comforts where she could find them.

Her blood was superheated where it trickled from her healing throat. It coated her breasts and soaked the thin fabric of the shift plastered against her upper body. Every time she writhed, more blood was wrung out of the wound, causing the dark magic in the air to intensify. Each breath was a fight against all of that sickening unholy power, and she was tired.

Xavier made a strangled sound in the back of his throat as she forced her limbs to stop moving and rest against him. Tian closed her eyes and was hit with a bitter visual of the raven-haired stranger from the show. Sweet mother. She writhed again as lust mingled with the pain assaulting her nervous system. She groaned and willed back the stillness in the chaos of her own resurrection. It hurt more when she fought. One of these days she'd learn to stop doing that.

The half angel behind her attempted to rearrange her without losing contact. Tian opened her eyes. Royal was kneeling at the edge of the circle. His emerald green gaze burned six shades lighter from exertion of the demon blood in his system. He was watching them with a strange expression; then again he was in the process of working in some pretty heavy mojo. Blood magic was potent stuff. When the blood belonged to an immortal it upped the stakes. The more power there was, the more room for mistakes, and Royal didn't make mistakes. Ever.

He was whispering to himself and drawing sigils with her blood over the silver circle set into the marble floor. Ironic, that she was the one bleeding and they were the ones she was going to owe the favor to after this was over. The world changed, but it never seemed to stop bartering.

Royal caught her watching him and flashed a cruel smile revealing the platinum caps of his two lower incisors. They gleamed along with the rest of the metal in his face and made him look like a hard ass and a slut, which wasn't an accident. Tian cleared her throat, causing a fresh wave of leakage from the cut. The copper tang seeped into her mouth, bubbling up from the back of her throat. She leaned left and spat the viscous red mass onto the floor. The blood that didn't make it dripped down her chin.

Xavier released her arm so he could free a hand to brush the hair back from her face. Royal was watching again with a pained look she no doubt shared.

"You gonna try and save me now, Xavier?"

Royal shook his head and turned to finish setting up the last pieces of his spell. She liked him as much as it was possible to like anyone, always felt more comfortable around that biting sarcasm insulation of his. Royal didn't do personal and he didn't do kind, but in his own way that lack was a kindness of its own. Xavier settled his face against the undamaged side of her neck and slid upward, gradually increasing pressure until his lips grazed the shell of her ear.

"I would if I thought you'd let me."

His voice was careful, devoid of the emotion that made its way too often to the surface. Tian sifted around her soul, finding nothing for him, but an exhausted sense of pity. No doubt it was a smaller kernel of what was emanating from the male behind her. Damn angels.