Desire Unchained (45 page)

junkie just for the sake of getting high, anyway. He’d eaten his share of humans and demons who had drugs in their systems, but that hadn’t been why Wraith had chosen them as food. At least,

that’s what he’d told himself.

In any case, he hadn’t woken up with a drug or alcohol hangover in months, but this …

this was one mother of a hangover.

He peeled open his eyes, the pain convincing him his eyelids were coated on the inside

with sandpaper. They watered, and he had to blink several times before he could focus. Through

blurry vision he saw chains hanging in loops from a dark ceiling. Low, muted voices blended

with the sound of beeping hospital equipment and ringing in his ears. He was at UG.

He should be relieved, comforted to be safe. Instead, his gut wrenched. Clearly, he’d

screwed up again, and his brothers were going to chew his ass but good.

Speak of the demons
, he thought, as Eidolon and Shade entered the room. Wraith tried to

lift his head, but a wave of nausea made the room spin.

“Hey, bro,” Shade said, as he grasped Wraith’s wrist. A warm, pulsing sensation shot up

Wraith’s arm. Shade was doing his body probe thing, checking his vitals and whatever other crap

needed to be checked. Maybe he could do something about the nausea.

“What’s up?” he croaked. “You boys are wearing your grim faces.” Which meant he’d

fucked up even more royally than he’d thought.

Eidolon didn’t smile, not even the fake, doctorish, it’s-going-to-be-okay smile. “What

happened the other night?”

“Other night?”

“You’ve been out for two weeks,” E said. “What happened?”

Wraith levered up so fast his head threatened to fall off. “Oh, no. Fuck, no. E, did I kill

someone? Did the Council torture you—”

His brothers both pushed him back on the bed. “I’m fine, Wraith. The Vamp Council

didn’t summon me for punishment. But I need to know what happened.”

Relief made him sag into the mattress as he searched the black hole that was his memory.

An alley. He’d been in an alley. And in pain. But why? “I’m not sure. How did I get here?”

Shade grunted. “I felt your distress. Grabbed a medic team and took a Harrowgate to

you.”

“What do you remember?” E asked, jacking up the head of the bed so Wraith could sit

up.

He sifted through the fuzzy memories, but piecing them together was like trying to do a

jigsaw puzzle while blindfolded. “I was eating a gangbanger. Tasty, surprisingly free of drugs.”

He frowned. Had he killed the guy? No, he didn’t think so … remembered closing the punctures.

“I felt a sting in my neck. And there was a male. Demon, I think. Why?”

The pulses down his arm stopped, but Shade kept his hand where it was. “You were

attacked by an assassin. Sent by Roag.”

“Ah … did you guys miss the bulletin? Roag is gone. For real this time.” Their oldest

brother had plotted a gruesome revenge against the three of them, had nearly succeeded. If

Wraith never saw the dark depths of a dungeon again, it would be too soon.

Eidolon ran his hand through his short, dark hair. “Yeah, well, he hired the assassin to

handle his revenge on us in the event of his death. You must have injured him, because he was in

bad shape. Tayla tracked and caught him while Shade was bringing you back here. He confessed

everything before Luc ate him.”

“
Ate
him?”

E nodded. “The assassin was a leopard-shifter. Nothing scares them more than

werewolves, so we chained him up in Luc’s basement to get him to talk. We thought we’d

secured him far enough away from Luc.” He shrugged. “Apparently not.”

“I love werewolves,” Wraith said, shooting Shade a sly grin. “Guess you’d better not piss

off Runa. She might eat you.” Shade had bonded to a werewolf last year, and had been

disgustingly happy since. “Why are you here, anyway? Shouldn’t you be helping her with the

monsters?”

“You mean the ones you haven’t bothered to come see yet?”

“Shade.” Eidolon’s voice held a soft warning, which was odd. Usually Shade was the

voice of reason when it came to handling Wraith.

But ever since Runa had delivered their triplets, Shade had been seriously overprotective

and easily offended. He just didn’t get that not everyone went goo-goo over his offspring as

much as he did.

Wraith shoved the sheet off his body and saw that he was naked. Not that he cared, but

his coat had better not have been ruined when they stripped him. Knowing Shade’s love of

trauma shears, Wraith figured odds were good that he’d have to buy another one.

“So why all the doom and gloom? The assassin failed.”

Shade and E exchanged glances, which set Wraith on high alert. This wasn’t good.

“He didn’t fail,” Shade said softly. “The guy has a partner. He’s still out there.”

“So I hunt his ass down and kill him. I don’t see the problem.”

Shade’s pause made Wraith’s gut do a slow slide to his feet. “The problem is that the first

assassin shot you with a slow-acting poison dart.”

Wraith snorted. “Is that all? Just shoot me up with the antidote.”

“Remember Roag’s foray into the storeroom?” E asked, and yeah, Wraith remembered.

Last year during Roag’s bid for revenge, he’d helped himself to E’s collection of rare artifacts

and crap Wraith gathered for him. “One of the things he took was the mordlair necrotoxin. That’s

what the assassin used.” E exhaled slowly. “There’s no antidote.”

No antidote?
“Then a spell. Find a spell to cure it.” Panic started to fray the edges of his control, and Shade must have sensed it, because his grip grew firmer.

“Wraith, we’ve consulted every text, every shaman, every witch … there’s nothing that

can flush the poison from your system.”

“So, bottom line. What are you saying?”

E handed Wraith a mirror. “Take a look at your neck.” He brushed Wraith’s hair back to

reveal his personal symbol at the top of his
dermoire.
The hourglass, which had always appeared full on the bottom, had emerged following his first maturation cycle at the age of twenty.

Wraith inhaled sharply at what he saw now: the hourglass had been inverted, the sand

flowing from top to bottom, marking time.

“You’re dying,” Eidolon said. “You have a month, maybe six weeks, to live.”