Shadowfae (7 page)

I scrabbled in his hair, trying to drag him off, stiff black curls scratching my fingers, but he didn’t let go until he was finished.

He straightened, sucking crimson remnants from his lips, catching his breath. A healthy flush warmed his skin, like he’d exercised or spent time in the sun. “You’re filthy with sin, Jade. Get to confession, be absolved.”

“Go to hell.” I clutched the crease of my elbow, bending my arm up, blood already dripping. He hadn’t taken that much. I didn’t feel faint or anything. I just wanted to kick his head in for pushing me around.

“I will. Why you think I wanna live forever?” He licked his pointed teeth clean and wiped his mouth with the back of his heavy hand. Not a drop stained his clothes. “Get out of my place, whore. Don’t come back till you’re clean.”

I laughed, incredulous. “Are you listening to yourself? Ever hear of throw the first stone, and all that?”

“Jesus was a nice man. I’m not. Get the fuck out.” His lips tightened, mean and hard, and the pulse in his jaw quickened.

For Ange to curse in front of a woman, even one he despised like me, he must be dead furious. Time to burn my bridges. I raised my voice so the whole restaurant would hear. It wasn’t like they weren’t all straining their ears already. “You know what? Fuck you, Ange. I’m sorry I had to kill Nino. He was a better screw than you. At least I could feel it when he stuck his cock in me.”

And I walked out, shoving awkwardly past customers with my hand still clamped on my bleeding elbow, my heels clicking on the tiles. The Valenti boys studiously kept their gazes down, but Tony’s graveyard chuckle followed me, and as I reached the street, I heard the crack of smashing timber.

A
cross the street, Kane sits on the sidewalk in a shimmer of overwarm air, tapping listless black nails on the white plastic café table. Streetlights burn golden haloes onto the pavement, traffic cruises by in whiffs of carbon and warm metal, bats flicker and flap on fragrant currents dark with kinetic mystery.

A glorious summer night, brief and frantic like a chemical mood, ripe for mischief and power games. But Kane shifts, discontent itching his skin. He sighs, restless, and a car swerves, the driver spooked by some cosmic fluctuation.

The waitress approaches, a blond child with bony hips and tendons standing out in her swanlike neck. She places a tall frothing drink before him on a saucer. “One lime soda. That’s five fifty.”

Kane dips the straw in, mixing the scoop of ice cream into the creamy green fizz. “You’re not too fat.”

She blinks, froglike. “Excuse me?”

“To be a dancer. The directors don’t ignore you because you’re too fat. You’re just not good enough.” He digs a banknote from his pocket and hands it to her, a yellow fifty. “Keep the change.”

She gulps, and snatches it.

But Kane’s lost interest. His nails gouge the table’s edge, his knuckles popping sparks. Because there’s his pretty Jade across the street, walking out of Valentino’s in her lovely red dress, black makeup chalked like tears on her cheeks. Bleeding, that hot steely smell he loves, but beneath it her real smell, delicate and fresh like flowers. He inhales deeper, compelled, and his nails glimmer blue with longing.

He forces himself to relax, and swallows a lime-flavored mouthful, his throat aching. All he need do is whisper her name, and she’ll come to him, talk to him, maybe even smile for him. That seems important. Kane isn’t sure why. Such a brittle thing, a smile. Such a lie.

He smiles himself, just to prove it, and green froth bubbles over his hand, the sour smell of turned milk stinging his nose. At the next table, a woman wrinkles her nose and puts down her latte, licking at the inside of her mouth in distaste.

His blood-splashed Jade stalks between restaurant tables and scuttling waiters, her jaw clamped so tight that little wrinkles line her pretty chin. Kane stares, golden flames darting between his fingers, and his clotted heart warms, demon blood flowing. So fragile. So broken. Only he can fix her. No one understands her like he does. She should come to him.

Her name burns on the tip of his tongue like an ember, flickering. But an idea shocks frost into his hair, and on the table his soured green drink crackles and freezes solid, the straw crushing upright. What if . . .

He frowns, his lashes crusted with ice. What if instead, he went to her?
Surprise, Jade, don’t cry.
Maybe then she’d smile, and he’d feel better.

He hops up, but pauses, a splash of nervous magenta bleeding into his nails. What if she doesn’t see him? Sometimes he’s invisible to her. He isn’t sure why, but sometimes she doesn’t notice the things he says to her. Usually it’s when he feels like this, itchy and uncomfortable and pink, and he stammers out something crazy and gentle and she goes quiet and stops seeing him for a while.

He watches her walk around the corner, out of sight, and slowly he sits, snow melting to trail icy water on his scalp. He doesn’t want to be invisible. Better if he leaves her alone.

“You cold, sweetie?”

Kane blinks, his mouth tingling with ashen sorrow. The curdled latte woman is gone, and a slender white fae girl smiles at him, scarlet flame licking in spirals through her long pale hair. A sultry, grasping smile. Not like Jade’s. His claws spring, flushing an angry sea green. “Not that kind of cold, child.”

The fire sprite twists her spine, her flimsy dress slipping up on her thighs, glassy wings fluttering as she squirms her chair closer. Sparks jump from her lips, fresh and fragrant with carbon. Her body heat twinkles the air, inviting, but sour desperation taints her zeal. “You got somewhere to go? I can warm you up.”

Ice flakes from his lashes like snow, and his skin twitches, tempted. But they never really want it, not when he’s in this kind of mood. They just think they do. “You wouldn’t like me warm.”

“Think I would. Think I really, really would. Taste?” She stretches a golden-veined white arm, flames ribboning, and reaches out with her index finger to touch her claw to his frozen drink. It melts, hissing off a puff of green steam.

The fairy winces and snatches her hand back, yellow eyes brightening with pain. “Bee, bee! Nasty green bee.”

Kane sniffs the steam, curious. Nothing, just rotten cream and water. “Did that hurt?”

She stuffs her wounded finger in her mouth, sparks gushing, and her nail cracks off like glass, splinters sticking to her lips. Fear glazes her eyes. “Nope. Nope, nope. Gotta go.” She scrambles from her chair and weaves out, wings jerking.

Kane carefully pushes the ruined drink away with one finger. He’d thought she smelled ill. But sick fairies only remind him of Jade, and Jade’s gone, off to work her own poison on Dante DiLuca. Cruel envy writhes in his blood, uncomfortable.

The skinny dancing waitress sidles up to him again. “You done with that?”

He glances up at her hard, tired eyes and her tight mouth, and despite his discontent, the animal scent of soul prey sparks demonic hunger in his heart. He gives her his human smile and flicks his lashes at her with a gentle waft of hellish compulsion. “Yes, child. Sorry about the mess.”

She scoops up the sloppy saucer and hesitates, her gaze slipping. “Did you really mean . . . shit. Never mind. Forget it.”

Kane grabs her wrist to keep her, and inhales to taste her name. “I haven’t forgotten, Claire. I won’t forget you. Ever.” A lie. But so is her effort, her desperation. So is her life.

She gasps, her pulse bubbling warm against his palm. The dirty glass slides on the saucer, and milky green froth splashes her black apron. “How did you know?”

“I know. Do you want to be better?”

“I train and train. Six hours a day. But—”

He digs his fingers in, growing them until his claws cut her soft skin, and lets his voice deepen to a growl. “Do you want to be better?”

The girl gulps, her eyes wide, the shiny sweat of fear coating her face. She sees. She knows. But she can’t stop. Her body quivers with longing, and her whisper floats out on warm soul-drenched breath. “Yes. Oh, yes. Please.”

Kane lets go, satisfied, the ashen taste of hellfire already crisp and arousing in his mouth. “When’s your next audition, child?”

She licks her lips, greedy now. “Sunday. At the Palladium.”

“I believe you’ll get the job.” He beckons, and when she leans over, he whispers a date, flames from his lips licking her ear.

Realization flushes her, and she backs away, her eyes wide and wet. “No. I’ll only be . . . That’s not long enough. Please.”

Kane smiles, faint. “Enjoy it while it lasts. I’ll see you soon.”

I
stalked out onto the footpath, clutching my aching elbow, and the diners sitting under the canvas canopy politely looked away as I passed, or quickly found something particularly interesting to talk about with their partners. A girl coming out of Valentino’s covered in blood isn’t something you want to stare at. You never know who might come out behind her.

Stupid tears stung my eyes, and I walked blindly away under strings of yellow and white lights, my temple still aching where Ange had hit me. He wasn’t following. He was too busy with his brutish war to bother with me for now, beyond breaking a bit of furniture and getting filthy drunk. But my skin burned with shame, hotter than the blood already growing sticky on my arm, and I seethed inside with rage and disgust. At Ange for treating me like shit, at Kane for making me put up with Ange’s crap, but most of all at myself.

I turned the corner—any corner, to put Valentino’s out of sight—and threw myself against the whitewashed wall. I wiped my face, heedless of smeared mascara, and clotting blood squelched as my elbow unfolded. “Fuck,” I muttered, and scrabbled in my bag for more tissues.

When had I turned into such a pushover? Thrall didn’t mean I shouldn’t stand up for myself. Sure, I had to hang around Ange, doll myself up, look pretty on his arm. In his bed, too, or wherever else he wanted it. Sex is always a given with Kane’s little assignments, and since I started needing sex to live, I’m not so much a princess that I can’t close my eyes and bear it when I have to. Ange’s energy is cold and bristly with rage and gives me the creeps, but it’s food.

That didn’t mean I had to let him beat me up and drink my fucking blood in public.

Red streaks smeared on the inside of my arm as I tried to clean it up, fragments of bloody tissue sticking. The hole was ragged, the soft skin torn between two fat puncture marks. Already a scab formed, and by morning it’d be healed. A swift-healing vampire bite, the original and best domestic violence. It’s gone before you have to say you walked into a door.

I tossed the sodden tissues into the gutter and gingerly fingered the egg-shaped lump on my forehead. This one wouldn’t fade so soon. Okay, so physically he was stronger than me. He’s a vampire; I can’t help that. Maybe I was being a bit hard on myself.

Or maybe I’d heard
whore
and
slut
and
useless bitch
so often, I’d started to believe it.

A lump swelled in my throat, too, and I swallowed, sniffing, my eyes stinging again. At least I didn’t have to endure Ange anymore. But there’d be another one, and another. All the same. All violent, angry, mean. Nice guys don’t do deals with Kane. And if one finally beat me to death, or killed me during their nasty little sex games—even if I jumped in front of a train or swallowed a bottle of pills—there’d be Kane, breathing my life back, making me go on. And on. Nothing could make it stop.

I let my hair fall to hide my burning cheeks. I didn’t want to go to a café, where well-meaning people would lean back and widen their eyes and ask if I was okay. I wanted to go home, stand under the shower alone in the dark and scald off the stink, but the place still smelled of Nyx, bitter and sad.

Poor Nyx would have tried to cheer me up. He’d sing to me in that beautiful breathy voice, bring me a bird’s nest or a sea-shell, roll in fresh-cut grass in the park so he could shake it over me from his crazy yellow hair. Sweet, clueless fairy. Dead.

I smacked my palms against the wall, the rough concrete stinging my skin the way anger stung my heart. My eyes filled with burning mist, and this time I let the tears come.

“Jade?”

I wiped my face uselessly, trying to swallow a sob, my throat aching.

“Jade.” A gentle hand on my bare shoulder, warm, hesitant. Not a Valenti.

I forced my eyes open, wiping them again until I could see, and my stomach tightened even further.

Dark concern shadowed gold-flecked chocolate eyes, the streetlight gleaming softly on brown skin and shedding an elusive autumn shimmer into midnight hair. He wore a black T-shirt over faded jeans, casual but elegant. With a body like that, he’d be elegant wearing a garbage bag. Even in my state, I couldn’t help checking him out. Damn. He looked just as hot without the rapture.

No doubt he knew it, too. Nice guys don’t get in thrall to Kane either. I pushed his hand away. “Go away, Rajah.”

“Funny. Not until you stop crying, or bleeding. Both would be nice.”

“I don’t need your help, okay?”

“Okay. How about my sympathy, then? You can have that for nothing.” Hurt glimmered on his tone. He licked his lush bottom lip, and for the first time I noticed it swelled a little out of shape, bruised.

I wiped my nose, contrition chewing at me. “What happened to your face?”

“Kane. It doesn’t matter. What happened to yours?”

Maybe Rajah knew a bit more about my kind of thrall than I’d thought. Kane has never hit me in the 140 years I’ve known him. Then again, I’ve never soultrapped one of his minions just to piss him off. I sniffed and swallowed, my voice indistinct through my blocked nose. “Angelo. Doesn’t matter either. What do you want? Were you looking for me?”

He glanced at the swelling on my forehead, my red dress, the blood clots streaking my arm. “No, but you’re not exactly inconspicuous.” He fiddled with the turned edge of a thrall bangle, indecisive, and then he stuck out his narrow hand to me. “Come on. I know what you need.”

I laughed, bitter. Sure. So did Ange. So did Kane. So did everyone, and none of them had a clue. “The world’s full of men who know what I need, Rajahni Seth. Don’t think you can astonish me.”