B00T3PMJTS EBOK Page 2

  Mürk watched her in silence. The threat was real, and he knew it. By some genetic anomaly, she’d ended up with the strength of three of her half-Rău brothers put together. Considering the power of even one half-Rău, that was no piddly thing.

  She picked up a lighter and, with a stroke of her thumb, ignited it. A one-inch flame shot up and she leaned the tip of her Camel into it. “You want to see me lamp my brother, lads?”

  “Yeah,” Duane answered.

  Such a good little laddie.

  “Uh, oh, Mürk, that’s hard cheese for you.” She picked a piece of nicotine off her tongue. “I like to please my lads, don’t I, boys?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m taggin’ along tonight,” Mürk announced.

  She laughed, then cut off the sound with an abrupt closure of her mouth. “Don’t think you want to be privy to what’s going to happen with me tonight, old mucker.”

  Duane made a mrm sound and Bo Bo ran his tongue over his lips, back and forth, back and forth. That’s what Bo Bo did when he got excited. Lick, lick, lick…sick arse.

  She flicked a gesture at Mürk. “Push off now.”

  Mürk grinned at her. He had a surprisingly handsome smile for such a nasty piece of work. Fact was, all of Raymond’s progeny were exceptionally good-looking, herself included. But for some reason Mürk felt the need to ball it up. It’d probably been the light of his day getting his nose broken by a Vârcolac during the Scripps Hospital mission when Mürk and her now dead half-brother, Rën, had tried to kidnap Tonĩ.

  Mürk folded his arms in front of him. “You don’t think you owe me a little fun tonight, ducky?”

  She dragged on her cigarette. She owed Mürk her life. If he hadn’t come along when he did and helped her replace her immortality ring, she’d be pushing up daisies. Had Raymond just assumed that someone would happen by and save his daughter? Or had he given it a moment’s thought? A burning coal lodged in her chest. Jaw squared, she rounded on Duane. “What other blood sport is going on tonight?” she demanded.

  “No punch-ups, Pändra,” Mürk intervened. “Not tonight.”

  Anger seeped into her head and made Rău red spark at the corners of her vision. Aye, her beastie had been riding dangerously close to breaking free ever since her punishment today. But “going Rău” was like a nuclear temper tantrum; she might grow invincibly strong when she slipped into the demon side of herself, but at the expense of complete loss of control. No, thank you ever so much. She didn’t care for that. “You should shut your cake-hole, Mürk. Protective Big Brother doesn’t suit you.”

  Mürk merely stared at her again.

  She turned aside, sucking in a huge lungful of smoke and exhaling it sharply. Mürk had been through this before, though. He must know how weak she was feeling. How painful it was to have this burning coal of helplessness residing inside her. How filled with self-loathing she was. Mashing out her cigarette, she twisted it hard into the ashtray, then shrugged. “All right, I’ll indulge.” She looked at Duane. “What else do you have on the agenda?”

  “I know where the Iron Cock is tonight.”

  “Ah! Now there’s a brill idea.” The Iron Cock was a sex club where anything could go on and usually did. The illegal part of people shelling out brass for “favors” kept the location constantly changing. That, and the drugs that were generally being passed about. She arched a brow at her brother. “You like taking it up the arse, don’t you, Mürk?”

  Mürk’s expression didn’t change. “Not the last I checked, ducky.”

  “Bo Bo does.” She lavished a nasty grin on her minion. “Don’t you, Bo Bo?”

  “No,” Bo Bo squeaked even as his tongue darted out and slithered across his lips. Lick, lick, lick…

  They all piled into Pändra’s car: a Porsche 996 Carrera 4-seater coupe, jet black on the outside, pristine beige leather upholstery on the inside, and an in-dash 6-CD changer, plus plug in for an MP3, with speakers that could blow a girl’s head clean off. Blimey, but she loved this car. She ragged it onto the I-5 freeway with hardly a sound from the purring engine. She had the Foo Fighters playing, and the rock band was belting out “Free Me.” Pändra tightened her grip on the steering wheel. How apropos was that sentiment? She drove faster.

  Careening off the I-5, she came to a red light at the end of the ramp and braked to a stop. Reaching into her small black purse, she pulled out two Camels. She lit them both and handed one to Mürk.

  “Hey, we’re back here, too, you know,” Duane whined. “How the fuck ’bout one for us?”

  She unbuckled her seatbelt, handed Mürk her ciggy, then leaned into the back seat and slammed her fist into the side of Duane’s jaw. His head bounced off the passenger side window and cracked it.

  Duane cried out.

  “Shut your fecking trap.” She sat back down. “And if you get blood on my car, I’ll make you eat your own conkers.” She reclaimed her cigarette from Mürk, catching Bo Bo’s reflection in the rearview mirror. His eyes were wide with terror. “Neither of you get to ask for anything tonight. You hear, you lousy piece of shites?”

  Bo Bo licked his lips. Bleeding spacko.

  The traffic light switched to green. She put the Porsche in gear and continued toward Barrio Logan, the scrotty part of town where the Iron Cock was operating tonight. Dragging steadily on her cigarette, she struggled to ignore the sharp pain in her belly. Her immortality ring didn’t take away all sensation, and considering her intestines had been playing Twister on the floor earlier today, she was feeling right cattled. She should be home soaking in a hot bathtub at this very moment, and if there was anyone in her life with an ounce of sense or an ickle of real affection for her, that’s exactly where she’d be.

  In a sudden aching rush, she missed Inga, one of the nannies who’d cared for the brood when they were growing up. Raymond certainly hadn’t allowed them to be raised by their mean-as-piss demon mum, Ұavell. When Pändra was a little girl and had an ouchy, Inga always made her feel better with songs and biscuits and kisses. Those days were long away now, though. She couldn’t remember the last time there’d been a nurturing female influence in Raymond’s household.

  She switched lanes, gunning the Porsche past a Corvette. “Do you remember Inga?” she asked Mürk.

  Mürk glanced at her. “Our hot Swedish nanny?” He made a rough sound in his throat. “Who could forget a set of milkers like those?”

  She snuffed out her cigarette in the ashtray. “Don’t be a shit-face, Mürk. She was a good sort.”

  Mürk paused. “She was.” He turned his head to stare out of the window. “I liked her cookies.”

  “Raymond got rid of her because of you lads, you know. You wankers got too interested in shagging her.”

  “Hey, not me.”

  “Aye, I forgot,” she drawled. “You’re as innocent as a bairn.”

  Mürk tapped his fingers on his knee. “Maybe we should give Inga a bell.”

  She snorted. “Can you imagine what Inga would say about us now? She’d be right proud of what we’ve become, for dead certain.”

  Mürk went back to staring out the window.

  Twelve-thirty in the morning on a Saturday night and the streets were empty in this part of town, with only the occasional cluster of dicey-looking gangbangers milling about. The roads were slick from a recent sprinkle of November rain, the shiny black asphalt reflecting the lights of the traffic signals and the street lamps in a way that seemed surreal.

  It wasn’t real. This world. Her. How could any place where a father all but killed a cherished daughter be real?

  With a hard punch of her finger, Pändra forwarded CDs to the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the solid drumbeat of “Dani California” pounded through the Porsche.

  She drove the rest of the way in silence.

  Chapter Three

  The bouncer standing guard at the Iron Cock tonight was Curtis, a huge black man with gold-rimmed teeth and a crisscrossed starburst of scar beneath his right eye that
he’d earned from Pändra one night at the Pits.

  He let Pändra and her group walk past the front of the line and directly through the door. Please, have one of the other waiting partiers bemoan that. She’d thrape him in the mouth. But, no, this crowd was too street-smart for that kind of chuff.

  Inside the old warehouse serving as playground tonight, the place was typically dim, illuminated only by unnatural blue lighting that left faces in shadow. The occasional strobe flashed, the white lasers streaking across a throbbing mass of people on the dance floor, bodies undulating and dry-humping to a pulsing beat of music that was sex itself. Most of the attendees were decked out in their sleaziest duds, others barely clad, some were outright nude.

  Dolf, the man in charge of this travesty, stood just inside the main entryway. He was a thick, knotty fellow with a square head like a bolt rammed into the wide block of his neck. He straightened abruptly when he saw her. “I don’t want any trouble tonight, Pändra,” he said, his focus zeroing in on Mürk.

  “Piffle, Dolf. You love trouble.” She reached up and pinched Dolf’s cheek, a good hard squeeze of flesh between thumb and forefinger. “It’s why you keep letting me come here.” Not to mention how much money she threw down the pan in this pisshole. She shoved five hundred dollars into his hand. “We’re going to need one of your special rooms tonight. Boys and girls. Toys. The usual fecked up bag o’ shite.” Without waiting for a reply, she headed to the bar. A stool was quickly vacated for her, and she slid onto it. “Four Wild Turkeys with beer backs,” she told the bartender.

  “Only beer,” Mürk corrected. Turning to the fellow on the barstool next to hers, Mürk hard-stared the man out of it, then sat. “You don’t want to be gettin’ foxed and goin’ Rău,” he said just loud enough for her to hear over the music. “Not in this place.”

  Mürk had a point. Hard alcohol and drugs had the inconvenient effect of making those of them with demon bloodlines go Rău. But this Monsieur Expert routine was getting bloody tiresome. She sniffed. “An hour into this night, and I’m already regretting bringing you along. Naffing killjoy.”

  The bartender plunked down four beers, and she passed them out to Duane, Bo Bo, and Mürk. She lit a cig and took a sip of her drink. Over the rim of her mug she spotted one of Videön’s mates across the bar. Edgar. The bloke was hot for her junk, and a prize sleaze about clueing her into that factoid. He emailed her nearly every day, although to suggest what, she didn’t know anymore. She always pushed “delete” without reading what he had to say. Although tonight, hmm, maybe she’d use him for a bit of rough. Making a man weep in bed could be just the thing to take the edge off.

  Dolf came up to her and aimed his square head toward a hallway. “Third door on the right.”

  “Top! That was fast.”

  “Slow night,” Dolf answered. “I’ll send your drinks in.”

  “Brilliant.” She paid the bartender, adding a generous tip, then hopped off her stool. “Right-o, lads, it’s fun time. Do make me proud.” She took two steps, then stopped and turned back around.

  Her brother hadn’t moved off his stool.

  “Don’t sit around cabbaging, Mürk,” she snapped. “Shake a leg.”

  “Think I’ll pass on the room, Pändra.”

  Edging one of her eyebrows up, Pändra strode back over to Mürk. She took a slow drag on her cigarette, exhaling twin streams of smoke from her nostrils. “My party,” she drawled. “My rules.” Almost hysterically, the thought came, It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to… Sod that.

  Mürk drank his beer.

  She narrowed her eyes. “You wanted to come out with me tonight, Mürk, so you’ll get your knob waxed if I say so.”

  “I’m not going into that room with you.”

  “It didn’t sound to me like I was asking.”

  Mürk regarded her blandly. “Any other night you could force me to go in there, we both ken that, but…” He went back to his beer. “Not this night.”

  Heat shot in searing waves to her face. Think I’m that much of a sad arse, do you? Clenching her lit cigarette between tight lips, she lashed her hands out and fisted up Mürk’s leather jacket by the collar. “You dead cert about that, old boy?” Rău red bled into the edges of her vision, that fiery coal inside her chest burning hotter and hotter. A crackle snapped apart inside her ears. If she let herself go Rău, she’d do Mürk over till there was naught left of the wank rag, enough to kill him if not for his ring.

  Mürk’s lips pressed in on each other as he waited for whatever she would dole out.

  She gave her brother a hard shove as she let go.

  His stool skidded backward, knocking into the one behind.

  The man on it scampered off.

  “I’m just here to make sure you don’t do anything too bollock-brained,” Mürk said in a low tone.

  She pushed her face into her brother’s. “What’s your angle, Mürk?” No one in the brood ever did anything nice without an ulterior motive. True, she had helped Mürk get his bum out of hot water with Raymond when Mürk and the lads had botched a mission to turn over three Dragon women to the Underground Om Rău to pay a debt. The Vârcolac had ended up stealing those women: Hadley Wickstrum, Kendra Mawbry, and Marissa Nichita née Bonaventure. Still, that didn’t mean she trusted Mürk any further than she could lob him.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  She caught sight of the hard kick of Mürk’s pulse along the skin of his throat. That was somewhat mollifying. “You’re a fool,” she growled, stepping back. “We’ll be revisiting this later, you and I.”

  “I have no doubt.”

  She rounded on her minions. “Offer up your gratitude to Mürk here, m’lads. He just made your night a whole lot worse.”

  Inside their room, Dolf had provided them with a smorgasbord of choices as ordered: two women, one black-haired and goth-like, the other blondish and sweet-looking…as close to sweet as one could get in a place like this. Plus there were two men, one Caucasian, one African American, both dressed only in spandex shorts. They were athletically built, their bodies slicked down with oil to emphasize that fact.

  She strode over to a high bench positioned in the center of the room. It looked like the type of gym equipment one might use for bicep curls, but it was for something else entirely. “Alrighty, Bo Bo.” She patted the bench. “Get over here, cracker. It’s time to grab your ankles.”

  “No.” Bo Bo shook his head violently. “I don’t want to.”

  Oh, yawn. Always the same with him. She’d say, “Come,” then Bo Bo would say, “No”—even though he was really gagging for it—and she’d have to make him. ’Round ’n ’round we go. She stalked over to Bo Bo, blood hot inside her eardrums.

  He backed away from her, sweat dampening his upper lip, and…

  There went his tongue. Lick, lick. Effing twat.

  She fisted her hand into Bo Bo’s shirt and yanked him to the center of the room. Grabbing him by the back of the neck, she forced him to bend over the bench. “You move from this spot, Bo Bo, and I break your snotter.” Holding her glowing Camel between the vee of her long, pointed fingernails, she jabbed her cigarette at the black guy. “Listen, mate, you lube your todger up nice and good before you go poking around, right? You hurt him, and I hurt you.”

  She spun hard on her heels and made for Duane, shoving him down into a chair. “You know what you get tonight, Duane?” She leaned into him. “Nothing,” she hissed. “You have to sit there and watch Bo Bo and only give it a tug.”

  Duane’s eyes blazed into hers, fury and defiance. “That’s not fair.”

  “No?” She waited for it. C’mon, laddie…

  “Y-you bitch.”

  There it is! “It’s going to be like that, is it?” Securing her ciggy into the corner of her mouth, she grabbed Duane’s hair with one hand and shoved his head back against the wall. Using her other hand, she slapped his face, again and again…three times, four. She released him and stepped back.

 
He was breathing with effort, blood trickling down his chin. His langer stood erect as Big Ben in his trousers.

  Jesus wept, I’m surrounded. “Poor babby.” She sneered. “Got a lob on and no one to do.”

  Duane dragged his tongue across his lip, licking up his own blood. “Maybe I should do you.”

  She belted out a laugh. “Bold words, love. Either you’re in the mood for a right hard stomping or just plain thick as a brick.” She snapped her fingers at the “sweet” one. “Come, Petunia. Time to put that kisser of yours to good use.”

  There was a scuffling noise over by the sex bench, Bo Bo whimpering. Pändra didn’t look.

  The blonde scurried over and planted herself in front of Duane.

  “Make bloody well certain you dig your fingernails into his bollockbag while you’re about it.” Pändra dropped her cigarette to the floor and ground it out beneath the toe of her boot. “Or I’ll be stomping you.” She strode over to a chair set against the wall and dropped herself down into it, the leather of her pirate boots squiching as she crossed her legs. She pulled out another Camel and her lighter from her purse, and blazed up.

  She heard the wet slap of flesh on flesh and Bo Bo squealing. Her airway tried to close off, but she ruthlessly stopped it. Out of her periphery, she saw the blonde’s head bobbing rhythmically against Duane’s crotch.

  She stared straight ahead, shutting her vision off to as much as possible, and smoked. Her lungs congested. Her lower intestines writhed and ached. Dirty tossbags. This was supposed to have been one of her extra-special outings, a night of violence and bullying and depravity to make her feel better. But nothing at all had changed. She still felt small and mean and insignificant, no better than she had five hours ago.

  Sod you, Raymond.

  She tilted her head back and puffed smoke rings, letting her Rău fire scorch her insides until she was nothing but a burnt ruin wrapped in a cold, impenetrable shell.