Wicked Memories (CASTLE OF DARK DREAMS) (17 page)

He growled deep in his throat. “You had sex with him.” His outrage shook the walls. A crack appeared in the ceiling.

“Stop wrecking my store.” Sparkle spoke through clenched teeth.

Surprisingly, the rippling and shaking stopped.

Sparkle’s cheeks were stained red with rage. “Yes. I made
love
with him. And it was damn good. Deal with it. That was a thousand freaking years ago. And how many women have you had?” That thought seemed to make her even angrier. “We both existed for millennia. What we’ve done during that time is no one’s business except our own.”

Personally, Kayla felt that striking at him by using the word “love” had been a mistake.

Ganymede looked stricken. “I thought we were—”

Sparkle had reached the shrieking stage. “We were
nothing
. We
are
nothing. Now get out of my store.”

The expression in Ganymede’s eyes shocked Kayla. He loved Sparkle, and she’d hurt him. But right now she was too furious to recognize it. The drinks Sparkle had downed before coming here probably weren’t helping her make wise choices.

Kayla tried to intervene. “Maybe we should all calm down and—”

Ganymede didn’t wait for her to finish. He scooped his shirt from the floor and left. The slamming door shook the store.

Silence settled around them. Sparkle leaned against the counter and then slid slowly to the floor. She sat there looking shattered. “What have I done?”

Kayla couldn’t think of one comforting thing to say.
He’ll get over it?
From the look on his face, she didn’t think that was true.
You’ll get over him?
Kayla somehow doubted that.

Sparkle struggled to her feet. “I’ll find him. I’ll apologize. Things will be fine.” She ignored Kayla as she walked unsteadily to the door.

“Give me your key. I’ll lock the door.” Kayla waited while Sparkle rooted around in her purse.

Once she’d taken care of the door, Kayla followed Sparkle back to the castle. Her thoughts tangled and knotted in her mind. Too much was happening. Aegir was systematically destroying Galveston. The god’s three-week deadline was fast approaching, and no one had come up with a plan to stop him. Sparkle and Thorn were still trying to destroy each other’s businesses. Which was really dumb, since all they had to do was sit back and wait for Aegir to take care of things.

Kayla considered that. Come to think of it, why
didn’t
Aegir just take out Nirvana and Live the Fantasy the same way he was getting rid of everyone else? Why bother with a deadline? He was a god, for heaven’s sake. There could only be one answer. Even with all his power, Aegir didn’t want to go head-to-head with them in battle. Interesting.

Her thoughts turned to tomorrow’s demonstration. Should she warn Thorn? She bit her lip. Sparkle was paying her and deserved some loyalty. Telling Thorn would be a betrayal. She couldn’t justify it short of quitting her job. Kayla decided that Thorn and his people were powerful enough to take care of themselves. Still . . .

She suspended her thoughts until she was lying in bed. Kayla stared at the darkened ceiling and thought of Ganymede’s cherubs and fat naked man. She smiled, but it faded quickly. What was she going to do with this thing, this
feeling
, she had for Thorn? As she drifted off to sleep, she still didn’t have an answer.

* * *

Thorn stood on the roof of his apartment, the wind whipping his hair around his face, and stared at the crowd roiling and buzzing like a hive of angry bees outside Nirvana’s gate. Grim stood beside him.

“Zane says they’ve been gathering since this afternoon. Someone’s getting booze to them. Don’t know how. So far the cops have kept things from turning ugly.” Grim watched Nirvana’s employees escort visitors out of the park. “The police are keeping the demonstrators far enough away from the entrance so people leaving the park won’t be hassled.

“You were right to close down Nirvana until tomorrow. We don’t want to take the chance of someone getting hurt.” Thorn wondered if Kayla had known this was going to happen. Had she approved? Had she been tempted to warn him? He’d like to think so.

Thorn wasn’t so worried that he couldn’t think about her. He already regretted last night’s words. If he had to apologize, he would. He frowned. Apologies had never been his favorite things to do, so that’s why he rarely bothered.

“I called every nonhuman into work. Just in case.” Grim glanced to where his supernatural team had gathered right behind the gate.

“Good call.” Thorn read some of the signs the demonstrators were carrying. “Death to demons?” He smiled. “I’d like to see them go up against Klepoth. He’d toss them into an illusion that would fry whatever few brain cells they had.”

Just then the police controlling the crowd started leaving. Most of them ran to their cars and took off, sirens shrieking. Only a few stayed behind. Too few.

“Where the hell are they going?” Grim sounded worried.

A few minutes later, Eric joined them on the roof. “I jumped into a few of their minds before they left. Dispatch put out a call for as many officers as possible to respond. There’s a bunch of stuff happening around the city. Break-ins, people running naked on the beach, fights breaking out everywhere. Even had a report that a parade of elephants was coming across the Galveston Causeway.”

A parade of
what
? “Everything’s happening at the same time?” Thorn didn’t believe in that kind of coincidence.

Eric nodded. “What’re the chances?” He looked at the huge screaming crowd. “What’ll we do if they get out of hand? Must be hundreds of them out there.”

Thorn had a bad feeling about this. The mood of the crowd, the liquor, the cops’ sudden abandonment, and . . . He glanced at the TV cameras filming the whole thing. “We can’t hit them with anything too obvious. Not if it’s going to be on the late news. Use your own judgment, and I’ll back you.”

The mob got louder even as Thorn stood there. They crowded the police trying to hold them back. There were too few officers for so many. By the time reinforcements came, it might be too late.

You can use your persuasion
. The temptation was there. He fought it. He’d come so far in the last two hundred years. He didn’t want to start over—fighting the compulsion, spiraling downward again. Besides, this was a large crowd. He remembered trying to persuade a big group right after becoming vampire. It hadn’t ended well.

Thorn made his decision. He’d use it as a last resort and just deal with the consequences.

Tense, he watched the crowd pressing against the gate. The police had retreated behind it with Thorn’s people. They were calling for backup.

“The other police won’t be in time.” Grim looked at Thorn. “I’m going down to the gate to see if I can help.”

“Only use obvious power to save yourself.” Thorn was still staring at the crowd, so he saw the exact moment they tipped over into an outright mob.

Over the next five minutes, demonstrators scaled the gate, climbed up the pilings from the beach, and even managed to swim to the stairs at the end of the pier. They wielded baseball bats—where the hell had they come from—in a frenzy of destruction. They smashed equipment and screamed their rage. He didn’t care about the material stuff. It could be replaced. He did care about his people.

Time for him to join the others. He leaped from the roof and fought his way through the mob. Since no one wore Nirvana uniforms, the H.A.T.E. idiots had no one to focus their fury on. Thorn hoped it stayed that way.

He’d just jabbed a big mouthy jerk in his paunchy gut when he saw her.
No
. She couldn’t be here. Why would she put herself in the middle of this mess? Thorn got serious about punishing anyone in his way as he cleared a path to reach her.

Meanwhile, Kayla wasn’t doing any helpless hand-wringing. Thorn saw her sock a man who shoved her too hard and kick another in the knee as he tried to grab her. She wore an I-am-woman-watch-me-kill expression.

“What the hell are you doing here?” He pushed a screaming woman away from him and listened as the crowd’s roar blended with the shriek of the rising wind. Thunder rumbled, sounding closer and closer as lightning played a zigzag pattern across the night sky. What was up with the weather?

For the first time, he felt fear. He had to keep her safe. He could hear the distant sound of sirens. Gunshots made a distinct popping sound. Shit. He only hoped those shots came from the police. He had to make a decision—try to beat the crap out of every H.A.T.E. member in a “human” way or use his power.

“I’m here to help you.” She had to scream to be heard above the roar of the mob. Kayla held up her crowd-control weapon of choice—a canister of pepper spray.

The uncontrolled sea of people churned and fought around them, screaming curses and striking out at whatever was nearest them. They were starting to fight with each other.

The Viking in him wanted to leap into the crowd and start slamming heads together. Bloodlust rose on a tide of red. He fought it down.
No killing, no killing, no killing
. His silent mantra helped.

But he had to stop the crazies. Time to use his persuasion. If he was lucky, he wouldn’t have to tackle this whole mob. He grabbed Kayla’s hand. “Stay with me.”

“Where’re we going?”

She got a man with her spray as he swung at them with his bat. Kayla ignored his agonized shrieks as she tried to keep up with Thorn.

“I have to find the bastard in charge.”
And put an end to this cluster fuck.
He tried to control his fury. Throwing someone the length of the pier would get him noticed.

Jeez, where had they found all of these morons anyway? One big redheaded guy carrying a sign that read
ALL PARENTS, TURN IN YOUR DEMON CHILDREN
used it to whack another H.A.T.E. member over the head. With a roar, the man he’d attacked gripped his own sign—
OUR GOVERNMENT IS RUN BY DEMONS
—like a sword and tried to behead his fellow dumbass. Great. Just freaking great.

If he wasn’t so pissed, he would’ve laughed as some of the rioters tried to take their bats to the controls of the carousel and landed on their asses. The wards were keeping the most important equipment in the park safe.

“If you want their leader, I’d follow the megaphone.” Kayla sounded a little out of breath as she ducked under the swing of a wild-eyed demonstrator and came up spraying.

She was leaving lots of pain and tears in her wake. He was proud of her. If he could’ve smiled with clenched teeth, he would have.

“There.” He pointed.

A short distance from the entrance gate, a short, skinny guy stood on top of a pickup cab shouting encouragement through his megaphone. Ten big men stood in a circle around the truck. Guards.

Thorn shoved and punched his way out of the park and over to the truck. He squeezed Kayla’s hand. “Stay back.”

“Not going to happen, vampire, until they pry this pepper spray from my cold dead hands.” She sounded committed.

Thorn knew better than to argue with a woman wielding pepper spray. Now, if he could only do this right, she might not realize he was using persuasion.

He shouted at the nearest guard, infusing his words with power. “Yo, I have an important message for him.” Thorn pointed. “Let me through.”

Only Thorn would have recognized the flash of confusion in the man’s eyes before they cleared.

“Sure. Come on.” He waved Thorn and Kayla to the truck.

Kayla looked a little puzzled, but she didn’t say anything.

Thorn stood in front of the cab and called up to the skinny guy. “I need your megaphone for a minute.”

The man blinked at Thorn but handed it down without a word.

Thorn held the megaphone to his mouth and spoke to the mob. “Stop.”

The crowd stilled. Everyone turned to look at him. “You’ll listen to your leader and do everything he tells you to do.”

Thorn handed the megaphone back to its owner. “You have to stop your people. The police are almost here. You’re in a world of shit. The owner of this place will sue your ass. Besides that, the cops are going to throw all of you in jail. So
stop them now
.”

The man stared at him blankly for a moment and then nodded. “Have to stop them.” He put his megaphone back up to his mouth and started ordering everyone to calm down and leave the park.

Thorn turned to Kayla. She stared at the skinny guy and then at him.

“That was way too easy.”

Thorn shrugged. “I just pointed out the downside to what he was doing. When people get caught up in their emotions, they don’t think beyond the moment.”

Kayla didn’t look as though she bought everything he said.

Thorn spoke before she could ask any questions. “Look.”

They both watched as the fighting and destruction ended. People milled around with oh-shit-did-I-do-that expressions before wandering out of Nirvana. As soon as police cars arrived and cops spilled out to reinforce the ones already there, Thorn and Kayla walked back into the park.

Once inside the gate, Thorn glanced at the sky. The wind had died, and the brewing storm had disappeared as quickly as it had risen. Thorn found that more than suspicious. He lowered his gaze and searched until he found where Grim and the others stood together. Kayla and he joined them.

Thorn raked his fingers through his hair. “Thanks for trying to hold things together.” He scanned the pier and winced at the damage. It was like a rogue wave had rolled over Nirvana and was now flowing back out. Thorn hoped the cops were getting names.

“I think it looks worse than it really is. You’ll get everything fixed up in no time.”

Kayla’s voice was soft beside him. He nodded and looked at her. Something powerful moved in him. She’d braved the mob to come to his rescue. And he had to believe that Sparkle hadn’t sent her. She could lose her job over this.

He reached for her hand. “We have to talk.”

She nodded as she clasped his hand, her grip warm and firm in his. “Definitely.”

Thorn returned his attention to Grim and the others. “That was a big storm brewing. Once the mob calmed down, the thunder and lightning just went away. Anyone find that strange?”