Passion Unleashed (44 page)

Serena Kelley—Serena loves life, adventure, and danger. She possesses an uncanny ability to locate anything she’s looking for, and someday she’d really like to take a stab at finding the Holy Grail.

Hair: Long, blond

Eyes: Brown

Profession: Treasure hunter

Species: Human

Identifying feature: Necklace she never removes

Shade—Born to an Umber demon mother, and raised in a cave in Central America. Thanks to a curse placed on him at the age of twenty, he avoided attachments, especially with females, for years. Has a fondness for leather, Harleys, and, until he met Runa, one-night stands.

Hair: Shoulder-length, dark brown/black

Eyes: Dark brown/black

Height: 6' 3½"

Profession: Paramedic

Species: Incubus

Breed: Seminus demon

Identifying marks: Tattoolike symbols extending from tip of right fingers to shoulder. Pierced left ear.

Personal Seminus symbol: Unseeing eye on throat

Tayla Mancuso—Tayla spent her entire childhood and most of her teenage years in foster care thanks to a drug-addicted mother who was unable to care for Tayla. Eventually, Tayla’s mother gained custody of her, but the happy reunion was cut short when Tayla witnessed her mother’s torture and death at the hands of a demon. After that, Tayla dedicated every waking moment to killing demons, and until she met Eidolon, she believed that the only good demon is a demon with a stang buried in its brain.

Hair: Red

Eyes: Green

Profession: Aegis Guardian

Species: Half human, half Soulshredder

Wraith—As a demon born to a vampire, Wraith is an anomaly. A childhood of torture at the hands of vampires gave him an intense hatred of the entire race, and he spent his entire adult life killing them for sport. His horrific younger years left him with a strange quirk: he won’t feed from or have sex with human women. All other females, however, are fair game—a game he plays several times a day. Unlike most Seminus demons, Wraith was born with the red-eyed glare other Sems gain around the time of s’genesis.

Hair: Kept between chin- and shoulder-length, bleached blond

Eyes: Blue

Height: 6' 5"

Profession: In charge of acquisitions for UG

Species: Incubus

Breed:: Seminus demon

Identifying marks: Tattoolike symbols extending from tip of right fingers to shoulder

Personal Seminus symbol: Hourglass on throat

The Reckoning

Reckoning (noun)—An unpleasant or disastrous destiny

Chicago. 1928.

They were coming.

Wraith lurched across the floor of the abandoned brewery, one leg dragging. He’d yanked the dagger out of his thigh, but the damage had been done, because his leg wouldn’t work right. Hell, it wouldn’t work at all.

Dusty equipment and trash littered the huge warehouse, slowing him down even more. He ducked behind a giant vat, but if he believed he was hiding, he was fooling himself. Even if he wasn’t leaving a blood trail a blind man could follow, the bastards on his tail were vamps. They’d track him by scent.

Pain radiated up from his leg, competing with the burning in his lungs for attention. Wincing, he put pressure on the puncture wound, which did nothing to stanch the blood.

He was in trouble.

Two years of running had gotten him nowhere. His mother’s clan had finally caught up with him. They’d chased him from California to Texas, and from there to Canada. Then Alaska. Now he was in Chicago, thinking he should have forced someone to teach him about the Harrowgates instead of traveling on foot, following the odd, ever-present feeling deep in his chest that told him he had family out there.

Then again, he hadn’t been overly enthused about finding those mysterious relatives. Not when the only family he’d ever known had tortured and abused him, and who were even now entering the building to finish what they’d started the day he was born.

In the moon’s silver light streaming through the broken windows, he caught a glimpse of his reflection in one of the vat’s metal panels. His dark hair hung in ropes around his shoulders and his face was caked with dirt and blood. Only his eyes looked the way they’d always been—the color of mud and just as murky. A vagrant had once told Wraith his eyes were dead.

Wraith had eaten the guy for that, but the homeless man had spoken the truth. Inside, Wraith was an empty shell, and he had no idea why he kept fighting.

“We know you’re in here, boy,” Dick, Wraith’s uncle, called out. “So why don’t you come out from hiding like the rat you are and face your justice.”

Justice. Funny. Wraith had been in a kill-or-be-killed situation with his own mother, but that was of no consequence to people who had kept him in a cage his entire life. Wraith’s mother had been a full-fledged vampire, while Wraith was nothing more than a demon. Didn’t matter that he had to drink blood to survive—he wasn’t a true vampire, so his life had been deemed worth less than an insect’s, and her clan intended to squash him.

He glanced around wildly for a way out, but three vampires he didn’t know blocked the exits. Looked like good old Uncle Dickhead had found some locals who were eager for a little bloodsport.

Wraith dug into his pocket for his knife. This was the end of the line, and he knew it.

Maybe the afterlife would be better than this one, because it sure as hell couldn’t be worse.

“Hell’s bells.” Shade clutched his leg, nearly falling on his ass in the middle of the living room of the Queens row house he shared with Eidolon. Little bursts of pain rode his nerves from his leg to his skull. “I’m starting to not like this brother of ours.”

Eidolon lit another oil lamp, but the ugly brown wallpaper seemed to absorb the soft glow. They’d just moved in, and the damned lighting didn’t work. Worse, the stench of the latern smoke made Shade gag.

“You’ve said the same thing about Roag,” Eidolon said. “I’m beginning to think you wish you were an only child.”

“Not true. I like my sister.”

One corner of Eidolon’s mouth quirked in a smile. “The real mystery is why Skulk likes you.”

“Glad you find this so amusing,” Shade said, as he hobbled across the room. “Because I sure as hell don’t.”

Eidolon swiped a bottle of twenty-five-year-old Scotch off an end table. “So, do you think we should head west? See if we can find him?”

Shade sank down on a chair, rubbing his thigh. They’d sensed this unknown brother all their lives, but over the last couple of weeks they’d felt him growing closer, slowly, which meant he wasn’t using the Harrowgates. Still, there was a sense of panic about the movement, and Shade got the feeling the guy was moving east for a reason.

He was coming to find his brothers.

“He’s in a lot of pain. We should see what the trouble is.”

Eidolon caressed the neck of the bottle like a lover. Growing up with privilege and wealth had given him a taste for only the finest liquor. Not that Shade couldn’t appreciate the expensive stuff, but cheap rotgut got you just as warm.

“Let’s find Roag,” Eidolon said, as he poured a drink. “He’ll want to go.”

“Let’s not and say we did,” Shade muttered, and E leveled an annoyed look at him. Shade rolled his eyes. “Come on. You’re not the one with fire shooting up his leg.” E could sense the existence of his brothers, same as Shade and Roag, but it seemed as if only Shade had gotten saddled with the ability to feel this mysterious brother’s physical pain.

“It won’t take long.”

Shade shoved to his feet. “Fine, but if Roag is at another opium den, you’re the one going in to get him.”

Roag wasn’t at an opium den. Eidolon could have dealt with that. Instead, he and Shade found Roag in an Irish demon pub. A demon pub full of horny females. Eidolon and Shade had made the mistake of entering, and they’d become stuck for two days, unable to leave until the last female was sexually satisfied.

Only the fact that their youngest brother was in so much pain that even Eidolon could now feel it forced them out of there. The needs of their sibling overrode the needs of the females, and they were finally free.

Exhausted and on the verge of collapse, but free.

They dragged their sorry asses to the nearest Harrowgate, where Eidolon studied the panels etched into the glossy black walls. He sensed the need to head west, but he couldn’t pinpoint more than that. It was Shade who fingered the crude map of the United States.

“Illinois?”

“Chicago.”

Roag yawned. “How the hell do you know?”

“Dunno.” Shade was looking a little green around the gills, and Eidolon knew it was more than exhaustion and a sexual hangover. He was feeling the effects of their brother’s pain ten times stronger than Eidolon was. A couple of times at the pub he’d even collapsed on the ground, writhing in agony. Roag didn’t seem to be affected at all.

The Harrowgate opened up into a run-down factory district. Low, gray clouds obscured the sky, and smoke billowing from tall stacks turned the autumn air heavy with gloom, as if the very city felt their sibling’s misery.

Eidolon definitely felt it. Now that they were close, his skin tightened to the point of pain, and a throbbing ache settled low in his gut.

Shade went taut, his head swiveling as he zeroed in on their brother. A heartbeat later, he shot down the street. “This way.”

They moved quickly through a bustling section of town, where street vendors hawked cheap food to the factory workers, and when they passed a prostitute hawking her particular brand of wares, Roag stopped.

“I’ll catch up,” he said, his Irish accent thick with lust.

Damn him. Eidolon knew arguing wouldn’t do any good, and Shade was already out of sight. With a juicy curse, he jogged ahead. The cavity in Eidolon’s chest where brotherly sensation centered grew warmer as they approached a more sparsely populated area. The heat exploded into an inferno when Shade darted through the side door of a building whose faded sign indicated it had been both a textile mill and a brewery.

Inside, the windows had been covered with tarps and wood, and eight vampires stood around a broken, naked body hanging from the ceiling. Various tools lay scattered like bones on the floor—hammers, blades, pliers. But what froze Eidolon’s blood in his veins was the blowtorch one of the male vamps was holding.

The stench of burning flesh permeated the air.

Rage nearly turned Eidolon inside out. “You sick bastards,” he snarled, and the vampires spun around.

The vampire with the blowtorch moved toward them with the slinky grace of a snake, and the others followed. “Who are you?”

“We’re his brothers.” Shade seized an overturned chair and smashed it against the wall. Wood shrapnel showered them all. Shade snagged one thick shard out of the air and gestured at the bloody demon with his makeshift stake. “And we’re only going to ask you once to clear out.”

The vampire laughed. “You’re risking your necks to rescue Wraith? Why?”

Eidolon had never had a problem with vampires… until now. “Did you miss the brother thing?” He swept up a broken chair leg and tested its weight in his palm. It took every ounce of restraint he had not to plunge the pointy end into the vampire’s heart right then and there.

“Do not interfere.” The lone female vamp eased up next to the big male. “This is a vampire matter—”

“He’s not a vampire,” Eidolon bit out, because by now, he’d had it with these assholes.

“As much as I hate to say it,” the male with the blowtorch said, “the whelp is a vampire. Leave us. This is your last warning.”

Frowning, Eidolon studied the body swinging from the ceiling. His dermoire was visible under the layers of caked and fresh blood, so this was definitely their brother, and he was definitely a demon. Eidolon had no idea what this madman was talking about, but really, it didn’t matter. They had come prepared for a battle, and in addition to his chair-leg stake, Eidolon had an arsenal of weapons stashed beneath his long wool coat.