Darkness & Lies: A Brotherhood Novel (#1) (24 page)

“
I checked on you last night,
”
he said meaningfully.

The men eyed each other with quiet disdain. Erias had been out cold last night. He hadn’t slept that hard in quite some time, but
he was injured. I
t would figure that the first time that he did
something
this would happen.

The question
was; how much
had he seen?

Trying to deflect from the situation, Erias defaulted to his usual sarcastic attitude. “What were you doing in my room last night? Coping a feel?”

Vanguard wasn’t amused in the least. “My home, my room,” he sneered. Crossing his arms over his broad chest, he sta
red Erias straight in the eyes.
“What are you?”
 

That had been the
one time
Erias hadn’t been able to run from what he was. As it turned out, Vanguar
d had come from a long line of s
hamans and was very close to the preternatural world. Nothing he told him surprised him all
that much,
and he was very accepting of his
condition.

On that cold winter’s morning, they formed a sort of alliance. Erias would watch over
his 
and Vanguard would keep a door open for
him,
so long as he needed his help. They had become so close that their bond
of friendship
lasted through the
generations.

His was the only connection to the world that he
had,
and Erias kept his love for
the family
hidden so no harm would ever befall
them.

He looked around the forest edge to be sure no one was watching before knocking on the steel door.
A dark-
haired boy around the age of seventeen wearing a soiled apron answered.

“Tommy.
” Erias tilted his head
in greeting
. “I need passage to my room.”

“Got kicked out again, huh?” Tommy laughed, opening the door wider.

“Something like that.”
Erias clapped him on the shoulder and passed by him
,
head
ing
for a set of stairs in the corner.

“Something wrong with your poufy thing?” Tommy flexed his fingers at him in
a mock explosion.

“You remember the agreement?” he asked, ignoring his poor attempt at miming.

“Yeah, yeah, never
saw
anything, never heard an
y
thing. My lips, eyes, and ears are sealed.” He held out his hand. “Forgetting something?” When Erias just stared blankly back at him
,
Tommy huffed and rolled his eyes. “My silence comes at a
price
. Jeez, someone’s getting old,” he chided.

Erias pulled out his wallet and peeled off a ten. Tommy cocked a brow. He pulled off another ten and laid it down on top of the other one. Shifting his weight, To
m
my jutted out his hip and tapped his foot like Erias had seen only women do when they were truly annoyed with him.
Except
Tommy’s annoyance was more playful than
the usual rip–
your
–
balls
–
off
–
and
–
shove
–them–
down
–
your
–
throat
annoyance.

Pulling a fifty
off
, Erias slapped it on top of the tens and raised his own brow. “That’s where I draw the line you greedy bastard.”

“Cool.
” Tommy grinned widely. “Got me a hot date tonight.”

Erias shook
his head. “With who, Jack the Ass C
rack?” Jack was a kid a
bout his age who wore more make
–up than a Geisha call girl and was severely ove
r
weight. Known to be a raging flamer, he had his eyes set on
Tommy,
and it was forever a sore spot Erias liked to pick
at.

“I’ll be sure to tell Michelle
you said that,” Tommy said good-
naturedly.

Erias coughed a laugh. “Michelle? Big breasts, long legs, easy lay, Michelle?”

“Is there any other?”

Erias punched him in the shoulder, knocking To
m
my back a few feet. “Damn
,
E! Take it easy with that shit. You know I bruise easy.” Tommy rubbed at his shoulder.

Eris pulled out another bill and handed it to him.

“A hundred bucks!” Tommy said excitedly, co
m
pletely recovered from the blow. “What’s that for?”

“Just doing my part. Make me proud, son.” He started heading for the stairs
again
. “And put some weight on, you look like an emaciated cheerleader.”

“And you’re the father I never wanted, Erias. I hope you know that,” Tommy called after him.

Chapter 1
8

“I checked her room. I don’t think she’s slept there at all.” Hadley chewed her nails nervously.

Cheyenne had been MIA for
days
. She hadn’t a
n
swered their
texts,
and she wasn’t answering her phone. And for good reason. It was still sitting on the table next to the bed inside her room
when she went in to check on her
. “It’s like she’s vanished into thin air.”

“People don’t just vanish.” Harold was scrolling through Cheyenne’s cell phone looking for any recent numbers she may have called hoping for a clue as to where she could be. The alternative was just too horrible to bear.

“Yeah, they go missing,” Tim chimed in. “Usually they do it on purpose. They want to be lost.”

“So what are you sayin
g exactly”—Cathy turned on him—“
that Cheyenne just ran away? Left everything b
e
hind without so much as a see ya later?”

Tim
frowned. “It’s a possibility. Women do it all the time. Pressures of family and work, they just can’t take
it,
so they start over.”

Cathy’s face turned red. “And what does Chy have to run away from? She has no life, Tim!”

“Maybe that’s why she ran away,” Tabitha said from the couch where she was applying a fresh coat of blue lacquer to her nails. “I know I would if my life was all about research and discovery. I swear the girl lives in the lab.”

Kris threw a throw pillow at her, slopping nail polish all over her brand new white satin blouse.

“Hey
,
you jerk!” she screeched. “I can’t believe you just did that!”

“Has anyone even considered the last time they
saw
Cheyenne?” He looked around the room taking in their blank expressions. “Have you? Well, let me refresh your memory. The last time we
saw
Cheyenne was when she was pleading with us to hear her. To believe her.”

“Oh shit, you don’t think…” Harold broke off, too afraid to admit that one of theirs might have been
in
tro
u
ble,
and he was too short
sighted to see a call for help for what it
was.

Cathy fi
dgeted in her seat, worry etching lines
across her forehead. “Erias wouldn’t do that,” she said v
e
hemently. “I know how to read
people,
and he seemed like really a nice guy. He wouldn’t hurt her.”

Tabitha, scrubbing at her shirt, gave a rude snort. “Oh
,
yeah
,
right. That man has pissed off written across his forehead in big bold letters. No, scratch that. He has the
I–
will
–
beat
–
the
–
living
–
shit
–
out
–
of
–
you
,
eat
–
your
–
flesh
,
and
–
pick
–
my
–
teeth
–
with
–
your
–
bones kind of vibe. He t
o
tally killed her.”

Kris lunged for her, ready to rip her head off her stumpy shoulders, but Tim was right there, holding him back with the help of Harold.

“You are such a bitch!” Kris screamed at her, spittle flying. “How can you be so cold? How can you stand here and say that she’s dead like you’re making a pizza order?”

“Let’s just calm down,” Tim said, trying to push him back to sit. “Tensions are too high right now. We need to focus on finding Cheyenne, not tearing each other’s throats out.”

A clear shot, that’s all he needed. Kris stared at T
a
bitha as the others tried to figure out what to do next. He wanted to kill the woman. She was a narcissistic pain in the ass and when he really looked at her, he couldn’t unde
r
stand why he had ever slept with her.

She looked good in a pair of jeans and even better out of them, but there was no substance. She couldn’t hold a conversation to save her
life,
and she was as shallow as a baby pool during a
drought.

It disgusted him to know that he had stooped so
low, but
as he looked back over his escapades, he realized he had been fishing in that pond for some time. It was no wonder Cheyenne never thought he was good enough to give herself to. Was he any better than the women he took to
bed?

Well, yeah, he
was, but
he definitely wasn’t respec
t
ing himself this
morning.

“I don’t know where she is, but I think I know who might,” Kris said, interrupt
ing
their chattering. Leading the way, Kris headed straight for Erias’s room like a man po
s
sessed.

Behr didn’t bother looking when he felt the air stir behind him. He always knew when she was there. Hers was a distinct aura of power and malevolence.

“Took you long enough,” he growled hating that she’d left him here in all his glory while she gallivanted after what really got her jollies off.

“You know the rules, my love.” Pressing herself i
n
to his back, Persephone ran her fingers along the long cor
d
ed muscles of his arms.

He was so
strong, one
of her fiercest warriors. His body was a masterpiece. No matter how hard he tried to come off, he had a soft
heart,
and she loved the way he looked at
her.

Sure, he tried to put off that he hated her guts. Shooed her away whenever she came
around, but
it was there in his
eyes. He
wanted
her.

They all did.

But for all the perfection
,
he was no Erias. No one could measure up to him. Erias was fierce, brutal, and rec
k
less. He had no love in his
heart,
and that’s just the way she liked them. Of course
,
that meant that he was really hard to
get.

He hated everything about her.
That
she could sense. And it was no lie. He wasn’t just covering up for some warm and fuzzies like Behr was. He really hated her.

That alone piqued her interest. She loved a good chase. That didn’t mean she
couldn’t enjoy her
men,
though.
Even though she had to be really careful about how far she took her play and where. Angel was fiercely loyal and expected no less from
her.

He was no fun.

“I expect you made good
use
of your time here while I was away?” She kissed the warm skin of his shou
l
der, paying special attention to the highly stylized blue fil
i
gree tattoo he had branded there.

“Oh sure, it was great fun being trapped in a place that I can’t even conjure clothes in. Let me tell you how I spent my time.
First,
I started by standing here. Then, d
e
ciding I liked it so much, I stood some more. When I got bored, I occupied myself by standing some more. And when I got sick and damn tired of waiting for you to come back and release me, I stood some more.”