Darkness & Lies: A Brotherhood Novel (#1) (14 page)

Pulling his phone from the inside pocket of his leather duster, Behr dialed the one person that always seemed to ease his mind.

“Hey
, baby.” An instant grin split
across his face when Sasha answered. “What are you wearing?”

Unable to stand it any longer, Erias flashed himself into the bathroom, consequences be damned. He had to find out why the woman refused to come out
,
and if he had to scare the shit out of her to get some answers
,
then so be it.

He wasn’t prepared for what he found.

And it left him with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

He thought back to the
electric
jolt he’d delivered “Oh shit,” he breathed. How much juice had he put in that
thing?

He wasn’t used to
fighting women. Well, not this
kind anyway.
Usually,
they were more ro
bust.
Generally reaching his height or larger, they had as much muscle as he did and made The Hulk look like a fairy
princess.

Kneeling down in front of her, Erias checked her pulse before scooping her into his arms and flashing them back into the bedroom. Placing her on the bed, he pulled the blankets over her and sent a mental call out for the only person he knew that might be able to help him.

Erias was standing at the head of the bed quietly watching over the woman when Alastair appeared with a blinding flash at the foot of the bed. The peeved expression he wore told Erias just what bad timing he had, but then, he’d always had a knack for interrupting.

“Sorry, but I didn’t know who else to call,” he apo
l
ogized.

Alast
air, a member of the Golden Sun
–a group of ancient warriors bou
nd to the service of Persephone–
had been a healer in his time and, under his contract, had po
w
ers that made Erias’s look like a child’s magic show.

Standing at an even seven
foot
tall, he wore a
Grat
e
ful Dead
t-shirt and black jeans tucked into a pair of heavy black boots that rose halfway up
to
his shins and covered in
thick
silver buckles. His purple hair fell to his
shoulders,
and he wore a long black trench coat which shielded the leather vambraces, armored belt, and several daggers from public
view.

On his best day, Alastair was a surly son-of-a-bitch and was a
s
deadly as they came. On his worst, well, Erias felt sorry for the dumb fuck stupid enough to cross his path.

Even now, a fierce air of power emanated from ev
e
ry inch of him like a tangible force making it clear that he was the type to kill first and ask questions
later,
making someone as cold and brutal as Erias hold his tongue around
him.

“Tell me what happened,” he commanded, leaning over the unconscious woman and skimming his hands over her body.

Erias would think he was trying to cop a feel if he hadn’t witnessed Alastair’s unique healing ability for hi
m
self.

“Do you want the full story or the abridged ve
r
sion?”

Al
astair pinned him with his hawk
–like gaze. “I’m a busy man, Erias. My virgin ears don’t need to hear about your sordid tales of debauchery. Make it short and sweet.”

Erias returned a
shit-eating grin
at Alastair’s off-
handed approach at humor. “She is an explorer and I was charged with keeping her off the mountain. She’s a bit harder to handle than I expected and when I brought her here she got a little irate.
Apparently,
females don’t like it too much when you threaten their freedom. So, when she tried to escape, I shocked her. I guess I added a little more umpf to it than I needed to.” Looking across the bed, Erias met his gaze and gave him a sheepish
smile.

“Well...”
Alastair drew in a heavy breath before r
e
turning to his feet. Placing his hands on his
hips,
he na
r
rowed his eyes thoughtfully on the female. “Do you want the good news or the bad news
first?”

Erias passed him a petulant frown. “Surprise me.”

“Okay, good news is, she’ll live.”

“What's the
bad news?”

“I think you pretty much fried every cell in her body.” Turning his obsidian eyes to him, their gazes locked. “Does anyone else know she is here with you?”

He didn’t know where he was going with this line of questioning, but he answered honestly. “No, I just stu
m
bled upon her outside my room a bit ago.”

“So no one would be able to pin anything on you should she…disappear?”

“No,” Erias said, dragging the word out to show his growing suspicion. He didn’t like where this was headed. He hazarded a glance down at her sleeping form and felt a slight pang in his chest at the thought of having caused her harm and even more, what harm may be still to come.

Alastair watched Erias closely. It was obvious from the moment he entered the room that the man was teetering on the edge. Like a love sick puppy, he raked the female with a fiery gaze that held both his guilt and adoration, though he was trying desperately to deny it to even himself.

Knowing what
it
was like to live in this world as a bound slave to the hellion Persephone; he was well versed
on
her possessive streak when it came to her men having a taste for another
woman.

It just wasn’t worth giving your heart to someone only to watch it be ripped from their chest, stomped into the ground, set on fire, and fed to the daemons. He had watched too many good men, too many of his friends, go down like that over the
centuries,
and he
hated to
watch any more
of them
fall to that
fate.

He would do anything in his realm of power to keep them from making the same mistakes he had
if he could
.
Free will was a bitch.

His expression turned grave. “I’m telling you now
,
Erias, this is no game. I can see in your eyes where this is going, and take it from me, it’s nowhere good.”

Hearing the note of agitation in his voice, Erias crossed his arms over his chest and narrowed his eyes on him. “And what is it
that
you suggest I do?”

“Kill her and be done with it,” he said simply, col
d
ly. “If she is the one who leads this foolish crusade, then remove her from the equation and watch as the others fall like dominoes behind her.”

Not liking the idea, but knowing there w
asn’t much he could do about it,
Erias led Alistair to the small round table in the corner, the pungent aroma of
char broiled
meat still hanging heavily in the
air. 
 

With a regretful sigh, he slipped into the chair o
p
posite him. “What do you propose?”

Glad he had come
to his senses; Alastair
grinned savagely. “I thought you’d never
ask.”

Chapter 11

Cheyenne woke up with a vicious headache. Rolling onto her side, she pulled the thick embroidered
Afghan
up and tucked it under her chin. Never had she felt so sick in her entire life. Every inch of her body pulsed with pain, even her eyes. Groaning, she eked open her lids and peered into the darkened
room.

“Hey, she’s awake.” The sound of Kris’s voice cut through her head like shards of glass. He was at her side the next moment, smoothing her hair back from her forehead. “Would someone turn on a light?”

“No.
” Cheyenne panicked at the thought. Not only did she feel utterly disgusting
,
like she had been sitting in her own filth
for…Well,
she wasn’t sure how long, but she could already tell that any form of light, natural or othe
r
wise, would be her mortal enemy right now. “If you value your life, don’t
touch that switch,” she
groaned,
her own gravelly voice thundering in her
head.

Kris poured her a glass of water from a carafe si
t
ting on her bedside table
,
and brought it to her parched lips. “Drink, sweetheart,” he urged, helping to raise her head from the pillow and tipping the glass for her to drink.

Sighing at the delectably cool rush of liquid gliding down her sticky throat, Cheyenne rested her head back on the pillow. “Ugh, I feel like poo.”

“I don’t mean to sound like an ass or anything,” Cheryl said, alerting them that her next words would indeed make her sound like an ass, “but you look like poo
,
too.”

Kris hissed his annoyance at her. Cheyenne smiled faintly. “Thanks
,
Cheryl, you didn’t sound like an ass at all.”

“Well
,
that’s a relief ‘cause you kind of smell like poo, too.” Cheryl wrinkled her nose in what would have been an amusing comment had it not been directed at her and her current lack of personal hygiene.

Realizing for the first time that she was no longer wedged between a bathroom counter and a door p
reparing to barter with a would-
be rapist for her freedom, but lying safely tucked under her own sheets in her own room su
r
rounded by her friends, Cheyenne took a moment to breathe a sigh of relief.

“My god,” she whispered, throwing her leaden arm over her eyes. “I’m alive.”

“Well of course you’re alive,” Tabitha snarled u
n
characteristically. “We wouldn’t all be sitting here talking to you right now if you weren’t.”

Cheyenne peeked under her arm in confusion at what she could have possibly said or done to
elicit
such a
reaction.

“Tabs,” Kris barked, “why don’t you take a walk?”

Screwing her face up in disgust, she stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her. Cheyenne’s head throbbed anew as sharp, blinding stabs of pain lacerated her skull.

“Would someone please remove the knife from my brain?” she moaned, clutching her head, desperate for it to end.

“Get her some of my ibuprofen,” she heard Kris say to someone.

After she swallowed down a couple of the horse pills and marveled briefly at how something that large could actually fit down her esophagus without choking her to death, Cheyenne curled up on her side again, taking comfort in Kris’s insistent stroking of her hair.

“Tell me what happened,” he said in a low, soothing voice.

“I don’t know.” Reaching for the memory, another searing pain shot through her. “I can’t remember.”

“It’s okay, baby, don’t worry about it right now, just rest.” Leaning forward, Kris kissed her clammy forehead.

As he watched her fall back to sleep, he frowned, worried over her mysterious disappearance and reappea
r
ance. One whole day and night she had been gone. He and Sebastian had turned over every rock and searched every crevice they could think of trying to find her and had come up with nothing. Desperate, he had returned to her room the next morning after and leading an all-night search party
,
only
to find her lying peacefully in her bed.

She looked like hell warmed over. Her hair was nothing but frizz exploding out in every direction as if she’d stuck her finger in a light socket. Her skin was pale. At first glance, she had looked deader than a do
ornail. Ra
c
ing to her side, he’d
grabbed her up into his arms and shook her, panic ripping through his insides.

When he realized that she was still breathing, he checked all of her vitals, which thankfully turned out to be
normal, but
when he’d taken her hand into his, he had n
o
ticed that the tips of every finger on her right hand were blackened, almost like they had been singed. Or she had indeed stuck her finger in a light socket…one by
one.