Soul Resurrected (Sons of Wrath, #2) (24 page)

Couldn’t think about that right then, though.

Logan had every intention of disobeying orders.

CHAPTER 19

Calla looked down at the stack of books still sitting at the other side of the table where Logan had pushed them, not knowing whether to feel relief or disappointment.

Right here?

The guy would’ve taken her right there on the table? What if someone had walked in?

Jesus, embarrassment aside, it spoke volumes of what he thought of her.
Nothing
.

And damn
her
for being so foolish to think he wanted anything to do with her. Damn her for letting down her guard and allowing him to
see
her.

Ooh, his head must’ve been exploding with smug satisfaction.

Damn it, damn it, damn it all!

The male probably brought home a different girl every night. Girls who knew
things
. How to please a man—how to tease him and make him want them. Girls who’d spent years honing their crafts and knowing how the male body worked.

Skills she’d never learned.

Sure, she’d fooled around with Draven from time to time, and she’d been forced to do things to Wade—her stomach turned at the thought—but knowing how to bring a man to his knees with ecstasy was about as foreign to her as knowing the genetic sequence of a dinosaur.

She’d be a boring screw at best. A charity lay for him.

Besides, why did she want to be any of those things to him, anyway?

Maybe what happened in the library had been nothing but a ploy. He probably roused her intentionally to make her look like an ass. It wouldn’t surprise her. How easily she’d fallen prey to him in the gym. Perhaps he wanted to show her what kind of control he could wield over her.

The way he breathed while kissing her, though, and the sounds he made in his throat as their lips were fused—primal and laced with aggression, possession—she couldn’t help but think he’d wanted her. His eyes had a certain concentration about them as he stared at her lips. The way they roamed her body as if he’d sampled every part of her exposed skin. Inexplicable. She’d never had a man look at her that way before.

Logan gave off sex vibes without even trying. Even without the pheromones, a girl couldn’t help but fantasize about being at the mercy of his desires.

Dark, wicked and dangerous.

That kiss. That kiss had her hot. That kiss had her craving and it occurred to Calla she’d never
known
craving before that kiss, because nothing tugged at her belly the way his lips had.

Idiot!

Calla rested her head on her palms. “Demon with an angel’s smile.” She could boot her own ass for such weakness. “Won’t happen again,” she muttered, pounding her palm against her temple.

Enough of these stupid, nonsensical encounters with this crazy,
psychotic
demon.

With her resolve, a much bigger issue still looming in the back of her mind pushed forth: avenging Jacob’s death.

She had to begin looking for Draven.

* * *

“What do you want?” The faint voice breached through darkness, reaching Zeke’s ears.

So beautiful, like a song playing through his mind. He turned his head toward it, but couldn’t see past the blackness.

Footfalls stomped in the distance. Some scuffling.

“Get out. I told you, I’m not interested.”

“I didn’t come to ask your permission.” A much deeper voice, met with momentary silence, had Zeke’s sensors flaring. “I’m taking you out tonight. Wear something sexy. And white, preferably.”

“Go to hell.”

More scuffling. A slam, like that of a door, jolted Zeke’s muscles. Everything told him he was awake.

Why can’t I see?

His head rolled back and forth. He flexed a muscle to raise his hand, but couldn’t tell if it’d moved or not. Numbness blanketed his entire body. No pain, no discomfort. Nothing.

Where am I?

He opened his mouth. No words came out.

Faint whispers drifted to him. “I think you know now what I’m capable of. Don’t fuck with me.” The male’s voice, by the tone—followed by the female’s, “I’d never
fuck
with someone like you.”

“This is what I like about you.” Moaning drifted over
.
“I’ll return tonight.” A swooshing noise cut through the air followed by the creak of a closing door.

A cough ripped through Zeke’s chest, gurgling and wet as if he’d drown in his own fluids. Sucking in a breath bubbled the fluids and tickled his lungs.

Goddamn, I must be a mess
. He rubbed his head against the softness he presumed to be a pillow, to be sure he could actually move a part of his body. Otherwise, he’d have guessed himself dead.

“Hey, don’t do that. You’ll disconnect the mask.” The female’s voice he’d heard a moment ago rang in perfect clarity in his ears.

Mask? The reason he couldn’t speak?

“Sorry, it’s a lot harder to swipe a ventilator than an oxygen tank.”

All Zeke could muster was an strained exhale.

“You’re going to live. Not sure if you’re cool with that, but it’s against my
saintliness
to just let you die.” Fingertips brushed against a spot on his cheek where the feeling hadn’t faded. “Whatever that hunter did to you was bad. Real bad. They never leave victims alive or drop them off in broad daylight, so I figured it didn’t want you.”

Zeke swallowed harshly, the burn in his throat proving that not everything had gone numb.

“I’m going to … wait to work on your eyes. I hear you guys can generate new ones. I just need to cut away all the tissue.”

Tissue? Christ, was that why he couldn’t see?

“I work part-time in a hospital. Surgery. I didn’t think you’d want me to take you there and risk that thing finding you, just in case I was wrong.”

The bounty hunter? How did she know so much about them? Was she lycan? He still caught a whiff of it, mostly overpowered by her very feminine scent.

Zeke wanted so badly to ask her the questions in his head.

“You just lie here and rest. You’ll be in and out. I spiked your IV with some Abyzz. None of the stuff I had was strong enough. But I know a guy, and he said this stuff could knock a dragon on its ass.”

Hell, yeah, it could. His twin had been using the shit most of his life until he met Shey. After her death, he went back to it. The idea that most demons couldn’t get addicted to the drug was utter bullshit. What Zayne managed to get hooked on was escaping his reality.

“I’ll let you get some rest.”

No
. Her voice, the only string that tied him to living while everything else felt as if it’d slipped away, had him enthralled, craving its magic.

No. Come back
.

A chair scuffed against the floor, followed by the click of a door. “My name is Lyric, in case you were curious.”

The door clicked once more, and Zeke’s ears were met with silence.

CHAPTER 20

Draven led the few Alexi he’d managed to scrounge from the streets, the only survivors from the night before, down the dark hallway. His stomach lurched—as if he knew, in his mind, that he escorted them down the path to death row. Because, what could Ryke possibly want with the Alexi?

After what he’d seen on the streets, though, their fate couldn’t be much worse. Even a tortuous death couldn’t rival the unanswered questions that seemed to plague the expressions on the corpses they’d come across back at the dock.

“What is this place, man?” Deuce’s voice echoed from behind.

“Nephilim club.”

Ryke had his seemingly ‘normal’ club on eight mile. The place Draven led the group, though, was something of a doppelganger to Moonshines—the ghostly evil twin of which few, aside from the regulars, knew its location.

Draven spun around to face them. “Look …”— He briefly glanced away. “… you’re about to see some fucked up shit, okay? Just trust me.”

“What kind of shit?” Tiff asked.

Like an answer to her question, the sounds of tortuous screams rose from the opposite end of the hall.

All of the Alexi shifted in their stance.

“They, uh … have some pretty messed up fetishes. But I’ve done some favors for the guy. He owes me.” Draven turned back toward the hallway and kept on toward the auditorium.

Lights flickered and a crowd cheered, as if they sat watching some kind of twisted horror flick on the big screen.

“I don’t like this,” Jenn whispered.

You haven’t seen anything yet.

They stood at the entrance of the auditorium. The distinct buzz of a chainsaw hummed along Draven’s spine, spurring nausea in his stomach.

“Oh, God, what are they doing?”

Draven didn’t even recognize the voice that’d spoken, dulled by the gut wrenching scream and the cheering crowd. He scanned the packed auditorium for Ryke. Dozens of black-haired, sapphire-eyed freaks sat amidst the crowd. All the nephilim carried the same features.

Only their human flaws distinguished them from one another.

A small group down at the front—the only ones not moving or cheering like teenage girls at a boy band concert—sat perfectly still, as though riveted on the grisly scene taking place inside the cage.

As Draven took a step in their direction, a firm hand grabbed his wrist from behind.

“I don’t like this, Draven.” Deuce’s grip tightened. “Whatever the hell this place is, I got a bad feeling. I’d rather take my chances out on the streets.”

Draven wrenched his arm out of Deuce’s grip. “Last night, I slept in the lap of luxury with the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen riding my cock all night. You want to take your chances out there with those bastards, be my guest. I’ll be sleeping on Egyptian sheets tonight, while you’re freezing your asses off waiting for death to come and chew your throat out.”

Deuce’s nostrils flared. He looked back to Jenna. “Your call, baby. You want to go, we’ll go.”

Horror brimmed over in her eyes. Brows knitted as she gnawed at her lip, she alternated glances between Draven and Deuce. “Draven, you’re certain these people can be trusted?”

Draven, at the very least, had taken down the demon who’d nearly killed Ryke. Logan. The only thing that could’ve topped
killing
Logan, would have been serving the demon’s head to the nephilim with a side of cock-and-ball soup.

“I’m certain. Trust me.”

Draven continued on toward the group, where Ryke sat between two paleskinned guys dressed as if they’d recently crawled out of a grave.

One rubbed his finger across his lips, seemingly entranced by the gore behind Draven. He leaned and whispered something into Ryke’s ear.

Ryke tipped his head back in laughter. As his head fell forward again, his eyes locked on Draven.

The nephilim waved them over and Draven led the Alexi across the skinny walkway from where the cage stood only a few feet.

Mid-step, Draven paused. “What the fuck?”

Two young boys inside the cage faced off, neither of which could’ve been more than thirteen or fourteen. The dark-haired one burst into a small, gray wolf.

The crowd gasped as a blond exploded into a reddish wolf, and gray leaped through the air.

The two of them clashed in the center of the cage. Their growls and snarls rose above the low hum of the crowd as the two ripped each other apart.

“Kid lycans?” Draven heard Deuce say from behind. “You kidding me, bro?”

“I don’t know anything about this,” Draven snapped back.

Something wet splashed against his face. His fingertips brushed against his cheek, and when he brought them into view again, blood coated his fingertips. He continued down the narrow walkway and stopped in front of Ryke.

The gazes of the two men beside him slowly trailed upward, eyes lost, as if they’d gotten high on some sort of drug.

Ryke gave a glance toward the group and back at Draven. “Good to see you again, my friend.” He rose from the chair. “I see you’ve brought some guests.”

“What’s this shit? You let kids fight here? I never seen kid lycans.”

“Come,” Ryke said. “It’s far too noisy in here.”

Deuce hesitated a moment before all of the Alexi followed behind Ryke. Every one of them stole glances at the odd supes trailing behind.

“These people are hella messed up,” Deuce said, walking beside Draven.

Draven glanced down at Deuce’s hand, firmly clasped in Jenna’s, who walked directly behind him, her other hand clutching the big guy’s arm as they made their way through the unruly crowd.