Dirty Little Misery (Miss Misery) (23 page)

Ben coughed. “Sort of. Here’s where I confess that I didn’t see their protections coming.”

“What do you mean?”

“They had some kind of fail-safe. I finally got into the files through brute force, and that triggered it. I got that strange French message I sent you earlier. Then the files, kind of, uh, self-destructed. But all is not lost, I swear. I am as good as advertised.”

Light shown down the track, and I closed my eyes in despair. “What’s not lost, and can you make this quick? My train’s about to arrive.”

“Yeah, sure. Bottom lining it—I restored what I could, and it’s some freaky shit. I’m going to email it all to you. I think you’ll find what’s there interesting.”

My shoulders relaxed. I was certain I would, and wished I had the chance to go check my email. But the Gryphons’ secrets would have to wait. What annoying timing. “Great, thanks, Ben.”

Stuffing my phone away, I hopped on the train. It was an agonizing trip. All I wanted to do was take the phone right back out again and open Ben’s email, but that would be a bad idea. I didn’t know what I’d find in those files, but “freaky shit” probably covered it. It wasn’t something I should read in public, particularly before I was about to meet with a Gryphon to do the extremely uncomfortable task of bringing Devon in for questioning. I needed my head on straight, my brain focused.

That was a lot easier said than done.

Although Purgatory was closed, several other clubs up and down the strip were open. The train had filled as we approached the right stop, and I got off with a group of dolled-up twenty-somethings. I wondered who these people were who didn’t have to worry about going into work hungover the next day. They definitely weren’t Purgatory’s crowd. There was a serious lack of vinyl and fishnet, and far too many designer shoes and preppy pants.

I outpaced the trendy club-hoppers, several of whom were drenched in perfume and cologne, and soon stood outside Purgatory’s locked doors. A lone light illuminated the entrance, and Andre was nowhere in sight. Thudding bass from a club across the street pounded in my head.

Giving in to temptation at last, I took out my phone. I would not check my email, just the time.

And my voicemail. My phone must have rung on the train, and I hadn’t heard it.

I punched in the number, and Andre’s voice appeared in my ear. Quickly, I scurried around the corner of the club so I could hear better.

“Jess, I’m on my way, running late, sorry. I had someone at HQ check on a few things for me. Apparently, Devon is one very trusted lieutenant. Dezzi frequently sends him to take care of business with us on her behalf. Most Doms are loath to do that sort of thing, so it’s interesting, but I don’t know what it means. Second point—you brought up Devon being the owner of Purgatory. Actually, he’s only listed as the co-owner, for what that’s worth. He owns the business jointly with Dezzi’s second, Lucrezia. Anyway, no need to call me back. It’s ten thirty now. I should be there in another twenty.”

I hung up. So that’s what Lucrezia did for a living. I’d often wondered. One mystery solved, just not the one that needed solving.

I gazed wistfully at my email, then checked the clock. If he was accurate, Andre should be here in another ten minutes. That was a long time to make myself behave and not open Ben’s message.

Or it would have been. With no warning, something cold and hard that felt suspiciously like a gun barrel pressed against my back. I guessed I no longer had to worry about losing focus.

My heart missed a beat, even as my brain rejoiced that I must have been correct about my theory. This was definitely not the time for gloating.

“Hands in the air,” said a gruff, male voice. He grabbed the phone from me and nudged me with the gun. “Back door. Move.”

I peeked around my shoulder because this guy was clearly not Devon. “Yes, sir,” I muttered, probably because my assailant looked military. He was only an inch or two taller than me with buzzed, graying hair. But damn was he thick. He wore a tight green shirt that proudly displayed a barrel chest and bulging biceps.

He was also a lust addict. Not a shocker.

The addict poked me harder with the gun. I started walking, not sure where I was supposed to go but figuring the back of the building was a good start.

My pounding heart replaced the incessant bass from across the street as the loudest noise in my head. Shit.

Think, Jess.

I’d taught self-defense courses. I’d beaten the crap out of Victor Aubrey not even a month ago. I carried a damn salamander-forged knife I’d stolen from a fucked-up fury bar. For the love of dragons, I should be able to take care of myself.

Except no one had ever held me at gunpoint before. I knew what I taught others to do in this situation, but I was not feeling badass at the moment. Self-defense rule number one was always the same—pay attention to your surroundings so you’re less likely to put yourself in situations where you’ll get in trouble.

Oops.

I wet my lips, hoping it wasn’t too late to atone for my lack of awareness. I still had Misery at my hip, but I wasn’t stupid enough to make a go for it. Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight—not just a rule, but a cliché.

My attacker moved silently behind me, his feet scarcely making a sound as we traipsed over the gravel-strewn asphalt. No wonder I hadn’t heard him sneak up on me. This guy was good. Maybe a professional.

Eyes open wide, I pushed the panic inside deep into my gut. Strong fear provided an excellent high, but combining it with my own adrenaline could be too much. It could make me reckless, and I couldn’t afford stupidity.

Finally, we turned the corner around the back of the club. A single, sleek sports car was parked there, but I didn’t recognize it. Farther down the lot, a foul stench rose from the dumpsters, and empty liquor cartons sat in a pile. A shadow flickered around one of them, and a flash of orange light illuminated a disturbingly large dragon. It sneezed a second time, producing an even weaker flame, and disappeared behind the trash.

To my right was the club and a narrow, utilitarian deck that ran along the back. Halfway down the deck, a door opened and another lust addict stepped out. He must have flicked on a light switch because suddenly the back of the building lit up.

“Hurry up,” the second guy said. He was built a lot like the first, and as I was forced up the stairs onto the deck, I realized he looked a lot like the first too.

Interesting, but really not what I should be paying attention to at this point.

“Go,” the gun guy said.

“I’m moving as fast as I can,” I lied.

He grunted in response.

As we reached the door, guy number two stole Misery from its sheath. I gritted my teeth.

“Inside.” He was also armed, a large gun sticking out of a shoulder holster. I didn’t know anything about guns, but it looked mean. Then again, so did he. I hadn’t been too optimistic about my chances of devising a brilliant escape before, but I was far less optimistic now.

I took a couple steps inside the building and discovered I was in the club’s kitchen. Stainless steel and white walls blinded me after so much time in the darkness outside.

Guy number two shut the back door and turned off the switch by it. His companion never wavered, the gun barrel still pressing into me.

My stomach was in knots, but I did my best to hide the fear in my voice. “Is that really necessary? It’s not like I’m going to run.”

Neither of them answered. Apparently I was dealing with the strong, silent type.

“Fine. Now what?” I asked.

Guy number two motioned with my knife. “Into the main room. Let’s go.”

I had no idea where to go, but he led the way. After a few turns through a side of Purgatory I had yet to explore, we entered the main bar. Every footfall echoed off the walls and ceiling. The club’s lights were on but dim, and a red haze hung over the dance floor. Someone had created mood lighting. Swell.

Scowling, I stretched my neck, searching the bar area for Devon since the floor was empty.

I didn’t find him. I found someone else.

“I warned you earlier. You really do get underfoot, pet.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Lucrezia emerged from around the far side of the bar. For once, she didn’t look like she was sucking a lemon. She looked pleased.

Figured it would have to be at my expense.

She waved one manicured finger at the men, and the gun barrel stopped poking me in the spine. Guy number two handed my knife and phone to Lucrezia, while number one holstered his weapon.

She turned off my phone and tossed both objects on a table. “Adorable, aren’t they? John and Jay—they’re brothers, ex-special forces and my personal security detail when needed. There’s a delicious wickedness to having them both, sometimes at once. I love a man in uniform unless it’s Gryphon black. Don’t you, pet?”

“Can’t say I care one way or another.” The longer Lucrezia droned on about her magically stolen love life, the longer I had to find a way out of this disaster. My gaze roamed over the empty club, but scanning the area and finding an idea weren’t the same thing at all.

“No, that’s true. You like your men to be satyrs. Powerful ones.”

If I grabbed a chair or knocked a table over and made a lunge at Lucrezia, would her addict goons actually shoot me? The fact that she hadn’t had them do it yet suggested not. On the other hand, I wasn’t sure I wanted to risk it. Not while I had questions, and not while my fate was uncertain.

“Only one satyr,” I said, trying to pretend as though I wasn’t contemplating methods for bashing her head in.

She laughed. “I don’t think so. There’s something different about you, you and your weird satyr-like gift, and they’re all fascinated by it. Personally, I don’t understand, but I’ve always been hopelessly mainstream about what attracts me.” She ran a nail down Guy One’s biceps to illustrate the point.

The enthralled look on her addict’s face made my already unhappy gut twist in disgust. “Stop playing with your food. Where’s Devon?”

Lucrezia perched on the edge of a table. “Devon’s not here. When I heard that you planned on coming by, I asked him to run an errand for me and told him I’d handle the paperwork he had to do. It’s just the four of us, pet. For now.”

“What do you mean for now?”

Lucrezia clucked her tongue. “A bit late to be playing coy, don’t you think?”

“I’m not playing.” It was the truth, mostly. My brain was piecing everything together, but I had missing chunks. Besides, getting Lucrezia to talk was keeping me alive. “The four people who succumbed to the curse here—obviously you drew the glyphs on them at the club. The ones who died in Newton—I’m guessing you were the surprise we were told was supposed to be at the party. You stopped by the victims’ house to put glyphs on everyone.”

“Yes, and the same with the last two. It was so very easy, in case you were wondering.”

Her careless tone disgusted me as much as it fed my anger. “What about Devon? Was he working with you to frame Angelia, or was it you alone?”

“Just me.” She pursed her lips, examining me from head to toe. If I wasn’t so insensitive to most pred magic these days, I’d probably be able to feel her power probing my soul. “You can thank your boyfriend for this. Lucen mentioned your latest theory about Angelia being framed during our talk at The Lair tonight. I knew you weren’t entirely stupid given how you put together the way what’s-his-face Aubrey framed you, but I figured it was mostly luck. You’re annoyingly lucky.”

I hoped she could sense how stupid I thought her comment was. “Yeah, so lucky I’m stuck here with you at gunpoint. How did you know I was coming here?”

“Honestly, pet. You’ve seen my work with the glyphs and how they interact with F. You should know I’m wicked good at magic. A nice little distraction charm on me while you were on the phone with your Gryphon partner, and you never noticed how close I stood during the call. Speaking of which…” She pointed at Guy One. “Her partner should be arriving any moment. Go keep watch and bring him to me as soon as he gets here.”

My heart sank. That must have been what Lucrezia meant by us being alone “for now”. Not only had my stupidity gotten me in trouble, it was going to get Andre in trouble too. And possibly dead.

“Poor you.” Lucrezia smirked, clearly getting a read on my despair and guilt. “So upset. Don’t worry, I’ll let you give your partner the best last hour of his life any man could hope for.”

I bit down my surge of rage because Lucrezia wasn’t the only one picking up on my thoughts. Guy Two must have noticed me getting squirrelly. His hand hovered by his holster.

Taking a deep breath, I inched to the right. My best shot was now, without Guy One in the room. If I could get close enough to my knife, it might be worth the risk to make a go for Lucrezia.

“So why?” I asked, aiming to distract them both. “I get why Devon might want Dezzi gone, but not you.”

“But that’s the thing, pet. Devon
doesn’t
want Dezzi gone. He doesn’t mind being her lieutenant, and she gives him enough authority that he doesn’t care about getting more power. He’s pathetically loyal to her in spite of the poor decisions she’s made. But someone had to step in and put a stop to it.”

I slid a hairsbreadth closer to the table. The addict watched me like a hawk. “Is this because of Angelia?”

“You, Angelia, you again. Mostly you, to be honest. First she drags us into conflict with the sylphs because of you. Now she’s letting you run around with Lucen after the Gryphons claimed you. It makes us appear vulnerable,
and
it makes us vulnerable in truth.”

“Wow, and all this time I thought the reason you disliked me so much was because you couldn’t stand not being the prettiest woman in the room.” I inched a little closer to my goal.

Lucrezia rolled her eyes. “Honestly, pet. You really can’t control your tongue, can you?”

“Nope. Some guys like that about me.”

“Some guys would.” Lucrezia motioned to her goon, and he stepped between me and the table. Dragon shit on toast. She must have sensed I was up to something. “There’s dissension within our domus, and at the same time the furies are up to no good. We don’t know what their aim is, but we don’t have time for Dezzi to play at being a benevolent den mother. We need a Dom who’s watching out for us and going on the offensive. And let me tell you, if Devon won’t be the leader we need to do that, then I’ll petition the Upper Council for the position myself.”

“Consider me shocked by your kindness. The way you care for your fellow satyrs is touching. And to think, you only had to kill a dozen humans to do it.”

Lucrezia slipped off the table. “A dozen plus two. Our company has arrived.”

Wincing, I glanced over my shoulder. Guy One must have successfully gotten the jump on Andre like he had on me.

“Jess, you okay?” Andre had his arms raised, the same gun at his back that had been at mine. He wasn’t wearing his uniform, so Lucrezia either had given her goon his description or there weren’t a whole lot of guys wandering around a closed club this time of night.

“Yeah.” I sighed. Was this the time to start offering apologies, or was it better etiquette to wait until our fates were officially announced? “I’m fine.”

“That doesn’t look like Devon,” Andre said with a weak smile.

Lucrezia left Guy Two at my side and walked over to Andre. “You’re so observant. And so pretty.” She ran a finger down Andre’s cheek, and I could taste revulsion beneath the lust she naturally invoked. It was like eating ice cream made from spoiled milk, rich and sweet with an undercurrent of something gag-inducing.

Lucrezia took her time searching Andre’s pockets until she’d satisfactorily molested him and seized his phone, badge and salamander-forged knife. Andre kept his face impassive, but the only people he was fooling with his stoicism were the addicts. I could tell he didn’t blame me for our predicament, although that wasn’t much consolation since he
should
have been blaming me.

“It’s a shame to kill the pretty ones,” Lucrezia said, setting his belongings on the table next to mine. “But I don’t have much choice this time. With two Gryphons dead by Angelia’s F and evidence planted on you both that leads them straight to her, the organization will react swiftly and deadly. She’ll be gone, and Dezzi will be in big trouble with the Gryphons and the Upper Council. And finally we’ll gain some real leadership around here.”

I wanted to challenge her, do the whole “you’ll never succeed because…” spiel that always seemed to work in the movies. But alas, she already had succeeded. I couldn’t think of a reason why she wouldn’t continue to get her way after I was dead, and I couldn’t think of a way to prevent my dying.

Yet some part of me refused to give up. So long as I breathed I wasn’t going to get all teary and sentimental and wish I’d done things differently. So long as I breathed, I was going to spend my energy fighting. All the reasons to get teary sentimental were the same reasons worth fighting for—Lucen, my mom, Steph. Not to mention finding out what was in that damn file Ben had sent me.

I’d start fighting with something brilliant any minute now. I had a ton of energy flowing through me, a massive hit of fear and anger. My own and Andre’s. There was no way I couldn’t channel this into a plan.

Any damn second.

Lucrezia tapped her finger against her lips. “I think it’ll be too messy if I leave you down here to die. Up to the Blue Room then. Darlings, get them moving.”

“Yeah, you know blood’s a real bitch to clean off vinyl,” Andre said, as we were nudged forward at gunpoint once more. “You might prefer to do this elsewhere and spare your business.”

Whatever he had in mind for a plan, it didn’t matter. Lucrezia laughed lightly. “Blood’s not what I’m concerned about. Although if you get bloody, that could be entertaining. Jess probably is the sort who likes it rough.”

I clenched my jaw. “She’s going to kill us like the other F victims.”

“Oh. Great. No offense, Jess.”

“None taken.”

Lucrezia unhooked the velvet rope at the bottom of the stairs. “You both are so cute. Jess, just think—if you’d stuck to humans, I might not have needed to resort to such drastic measures. In a way, this is all your fault.”

“Whatever it takes to clear your conscience, Crezi.” It was a small satisfaction, but satisfaction nonetheless, to see the smirk fall off her face at the hated nickname.

The addict goons marched us up to the Blue Room, the same room where Devon had once stored the people who’d fallen victim to Lucrezia’s schemes that one Friday. When we were all huddled inside, Lucrezia pulled two items from the bag she was carrying.

Andre coughed, and as I glanced at him, he nodded almost imperceptibly. So this was it. If Lucrezia was going to kill us, we would go down fighting. It made sense to do it here. The room was too small for the addicts to risk shooting.

I nodded back at Andre, then steeled myself.

Lucrezia must have noticed the change in our emotional states. She barely had time to utter “Don’t!” before Andre went on the offensive.

He fell backward into the closest addict, knocking them both into the wall. That was the last I saw of him because I took advantage of the momentary confusion to slam my foot into the knee of the guy who was holding me. Spinning around, I lunged for his arm and for the gun. Mostly, I wanted to make sure he didn’t shoot by accident. Lucrezia had said they were both ex-special forces, so theoretically they shouldn’t be twitchy, but who knew. They were also addicts.

Of course, addict or not, ex-special forces also meant they knew how to fight. I wasn’t facing Victor Aubrey here. I might have been able to hold my own against an untrained crazy man, but all other things being equal, the guy with the leverage and strength had a big advantage.

That wasn’t me.

“Pin him down!” Lucrezia screamed. She sounded seriously pissed off, but she must have been referring to Andre. My partner was nothing but a pile of limbs in my peripheral vision.

Guy Two dropped his gun and grabbed for my arms. White-hot pain shot through my recently healed wrist, his fingers crushing me. I deflected his attempt to snatch my other arm but succeeded in losing my balance in the process. My leg crossed with his, and down we went. My tailbone smacked the floor, and the addict and I cursed in unison as he landed on me.

Then something wet hit me in the face. All at once, my world turned upside down. The floor seemed to fall away beneath me, and the worst vertigo I’d ever experienced turned my insides to vomit. Vaguely, I was aware of the addict climbing off me, but although I was free, I could do nothing. The room spun in wild circles, color and form streaking together. Closing my eyes only made the falling sensation worse, but I did it anyway, and I curled into a fetal position, grasping at the cold tiles beneath me.

So this was what it felt like to be hit with a disorientation curse. Fuck.

“Move,” I heard Lucrezia say. “You’d better hold them down while I do this.”

Oh so slowly, I shuffled left and cracked my eyelids. Andre was down for the count too, lying on his back with his arms draped over his face.

Powerful hands grabbed me from behind, and I almost lost it on the floor. Only the sheer determination not to die covered in vomit helped me keep my lips together. The addict shoved me into a sitting position. My eyelids fluttered, and I groaned as my head flopped to the side.

Smooth fingers forced my mouth open. Lucrezia. I opened my eyes the rest of the way, and she stuffed something sweet on my tongue. I wanted to spit it out, but she held my jaw shut and it dissolved quickly.

“Just the F, pet. You’ll like it.” Then she was gone, doing the same to Andre. When she returned, she pushed up my shirtsleeve and drew a mark on my upper arm. My weak struggle merely resulted in her addict squeezing me harder.

I breathed deeply when she moved over to Andre for his glyph. Already my head was starting to clear, the curse’s effects wearing off. But it was too late. She’d gotten the F into me. The glyph was drawn.

I slumped against the wall as the addict let go of me, unable to stand. Above me, Lucrezia wiped her hands together. “The drug should kick in around the time the curse has fully worn off. As fun as this might be to watch, I need to go do that paperwork I promised Devon or he’ll get suspicious. Enjoy yourselves, pets. I’ll be back in a few hours, but you should be dead by then.”