Chapter 10

As there hadn’t beenany police or paramedics at the foot of Cain’s building, I assumed Reynard was not mincemeat on the sidewalk. But his car and driver were gone, so I took the bus back to the hotel, and headed for the bar, where Zee’s dancing pole served as a reminder he was hurting somewhere, and I couldn’t get to him.

“Who fucked you up?” Tom Collins asked.

“Life.”

“I have the perfect remedy.”

I slumped at the bar and watched the hotel’s broken barman whip up a fancy cocktail.

It had been a mistake. All of it. What had I been thinking, opening a hotel, putting myself out there? It had lasted three days. Now a sorcerer who could control shadowbeasts had Zee locked away somewhere, and would kill him if I didn’t sell the hotel. Plus, that sorcerer knew things about me I’d spent six months carefully hiding from.

Tom handed me a pink drink with a toy scythe sticking out. “Have at it.”

A dry mist wafted off the drink’s surface. “What’s in it?”

“Do you really want to know, or are you just going to drink it and fuckin’ trust me?”

I plucked the toy scythe out and eyed it. “Is it going to kill me?”

He shrugged. “It might.”

“Adam?” Madame Matase breezed in. “There you are.”

“What is it now? Did someone else die, are the police here, is there a mob with flaming torches on the doorstep?”

She blinked. “Erm, none of that. It’s Lord Reynard. He’s asking for you to see him in his room.”

He was alive then. I picked up the pink death drink and gulped it down. Spicy, sugary, with a hint of something that probably wasn’t legal and may have been cocaine. Admittedly, it tasted good, and had a decent kick to it that buzzed the brain.

“Good?” Tom asked.

“Not bad.” A pleasant warmth zinged through me. I slid off the stool. The room tilted, trying to slide out from under me. Oh-kay. I hiccuped.

“Tom,” Madame Matase scolded. “We need Adam thinking clearly, not passed out on the floor.”

“He’s fucked. I’m not a miracle worker. I used what I have at my disposal, and he needed a pick-me-up. Don’t you feel better, Adam?”

“I feel great!” I hiccuped again and clung to the bar.

“See.” Tom gestured. “Excessive amounts of alcohol fix everything.”

Madame Matase remained unimpressed. “I don’t believe that’s true. Adam, are you alright, darling?”

I waved them both off and left them arguing, stumbled from the bar, into the clattering elevator, then up to Reynard’s floor and rapped on his door. “Lord Reynard?” Did I slur? I bumped my forehead against the door. Zee was missing, Reynard had been shoved out a twelfth floor window, and there was a mean sorcerer trying to ruin my life. I’d had better days.

“Come in, Adam.”

After clicking open the door, I peered into the gloom. Why weren’t the lights on? “Just so you know, I think I’m a teensy-bit drunk.” I showed the dark room a tiny gap between my finger and thumb. “Tom fixed me a drink, and I’m not entirely sure it was legal—Oh, hello.” Reynard was right there, in front of my face, looking all sharp, a bit serious, and super gorgeous. “Mercy, you have pretty eyes.” He was also really pale. “Did you explode into a thousand bats?” That seemed logical, didn’t it? I spread my hands. “Poof.”

“No, I landed on a car. Flattened it, in fact. It was most... uncomfortable.”

“Bats would have been better.”

“Adam—”

“A man could get lost in your eyes.” I touched his face like I was touching the forbidden. As though he were a piece of art that should be kept locked behind glass, not for the likes of my grubby fingers. Goodness, he had flawless skin. Of course he did. There wasn’t a hair out of place on his head or a pimple on his face. The man was exquisite, and I wanted to pinch his cheek and ruffle his hair.

“There is a reason for that falling sensation you’re experiencing.”

“Hm.” And he had soft lips too, which I was apparently now touching. Lordy, what had been in that drink? And fangs. Look at those sharply pointed fangs—those were surely stabby.

“I had planned to propose?—”

I snickered. “We’ve only just met.” I could kiss those lips, and fall into those eyes, and be free of all the worries and concerns, even if he now looked annoyed.

“—a trade. My help for your blood. But you are too intoxicated, and I’m exceedingly hungry.” He caught my wrist, stopping my hand from tracing the lines of his lips. “Adam, I’m about to take advantage of you.”

I grinned. “Is the big scary vampire going to bite me?”

“Don’t say it like that.”

“Are you?” He still had hold of my wrist, and even I could feel how my pulse throbbed in his grip. I leaned in. “Because I’m kinda into it.”

“You’re into it because I’m enthralling you.”

“No, nope, I’m into it because you’re hot, and the closest I’ve come to getting my hands on another man was Zee in the elevator and he shrugged me off, and I’m having a really shitty day, I don’t want to be alone, and can you just bite me already because I feel like that’s where this is going and all this talk is exhausting?—”

I didn’t see him move, just felt his arm clamp around me at the same time as his warm mouth settled almost painfully gently on my neck. Somewhere in the back of my mind, a tiny voice screamed how this was a terrible and dangerous idea, but it was already happening and it felt nice to be held. Then Reynard’s whole body—a body I was trapped against—tensed. Mercy, he was hard. All over. Not hard hard, not there, unless he was hard there? Was he? Did vampires get hard when they fed, because that’s what he was doing, feeding on me, on my neck, right now, with his teeth. In my neck. Drinking me.

Oh.

“Wait...” No. This was bad. “Uh... hold on.” I shoved at him, but the growl that rumbled up from his depths was a primal warning. He did lift his head, then as our gazes met, with me cradled in his arms...

“Adam, you are forbidden.”

“Er, that’s nice.”

“What in the celestial heavens are you?”

“Just a perfectly average human.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

He buried his face in my neck and breathed in. “You taste like sunshine after summer rain, like a heart’s first love, like the breaking of chains.”

“Oh, uh . . .”

“Adam.”

“Yes?”

“Forgive me.”

“What for?”

“This.” He bit down, and this time, pain mingled with pleasure. As his mouth and jaw moved, drawing blood from my veins, each tug pulled on my cock, hardening me off. Need surged. I clutched at his shoulder. His mouth worked, and my cock responded as though it wasn’t my neck he sucked on, but my dick. And he sucked it deep. It happened so fast, and the riot of pleasure came on so strong, all I could do was hold on as he dragged me down. And I wanted it—wanted him, wanted to fall, wanted to let go. He sucked on my neck, my cock, bringing me to the verge of climax with a brutal efficiency that had nothing to do with romance and everything to do with desperation.

I was going to come and he hadn’t even touched my cock, but by the old world gods and the new, I wanted him to. I wanted him to seal his lips around me for real, to take my dick deep into his perfect mouth, between his fangs. It would be remarkable. But for now, I was chasing the edge, trying not to come, and woefully losing.

Then I passed out.

I dreamed of a dark room, and in the deepest, darkest corner of that room something was buried under a pile of blankets. I didn’t want to know, but moved toward it anyway, and the closer I got, the more the mound took shape. The blankets weren’t blankets at all, but wings, tucked around a quivering demon.

Zee.

The clack of a teacup woke me.

I jolted onto my elbows, on Reynard’s bed—not in it—thankfully still dressed. He sat in a chair by the dresser, drinking tea, just out of reach of the sunlight pouring in through the window.

Had we . . .

No? Yes? Wait? I touched my neck and winced. Alright, that had been real, which meant the rest of it had been real too.

“We need to talk.”

I swallowed. I’d let him drink from me. I’d wanted it. Wanted him. Still wanted him, sitting there looking perfect, while I probably looked and felt as though I’d been dragged through a field backwards. I flopped back down and blinked at the ceiling. Bad, bad move. What the heck had Tom Collins put in that drink?

“How much we discuss, is up to you.”

“Did we...?” I waved a hand at the empty side of the bed beside me.

“No.”

So we hadn’t had sex. Technically. I wasn’t even sure I’d come, but I’d been close to it. Why was I disappointed? But that wasn’t the problem. Lord Victor Reynard had had his fangs in my neck, and my blood in his body. My little attempt at hiding in plain sight was rapidly disintegrating.

Perhaps he didn’t suspect anything. It was unlikely he’d ever tasted anything like me before, even in all his many, many years. So he couldn’t know what I was, just that I wasn’t as human as I claimed to be.

Oh deary.

“The more I know you, the less I know you?—”

“Gideon Cain is a sorcerer.” I propped myself on my elbows again. Reynard’s left eyebrow arched. “He has Zee. I have to get him back. Are you going to help, because if not, then I don’t have time to chat.”

“Adam.” He placed his cup down on the dresser and leaned forward, skirting close to the sun’s rays. “I’ve already helped you a great deal.”

That sounded a lot like a no, so it was time for me to leave. “Alright then. Thank you for the, uh... whatever that was last night, but we’ve definitely crossed far beyond the host-guest boundary, and it’s time I—” I climbed off the bed, then fell backwards. The room spun, my stomach lurched. A gurgling groan tumbled from my lips.

“Give yourself a few hours to recover.”

“Zee doesn’t have a few hours.”

“As I was saying, I’ve already helped you, and I hope by now, you realize I’m not here to hurt you.”

“Not hurt me?” A thin laugh tittered out of me. “So what was that, last night?”

“A mutually beneficial arrangement.”

“A mutually... what now? That’s what that was?” I stood, and breathed through the head-spinning nausea. “It’s funny but I don’t recall agreeing to you sucking on my dick—my vein! I said my vein, not... what?”

Reynard gazed back, perfectly poised and untouchable. “Whatever you think, the wards allowed it, ipso facto, you wanted it.”

Stupid wards. I was trying to regain some higher ground here. “Ipso facto, I was drunk. That’s probably why my blood tasted strange—if it tasted strange. Did it? Never mind. Tom Collins for sure put cocaine in that pink drink. I need to talk to that bartender. Where did he even get cocaine? He can’t be putting class A drugs in people’s drinks.”

“I’m something of an expert in blood, having consumed it from many a vein over the years, some laced with cocaine. Yours was not that.”

Oh. “Maybe it wasn’t cocaine?”

“Adam,” he sighed. “I appreciate you have secrets and have no intention of delving into them. I want to help you save Zodiac.”

“Why?”

“Well, for one, I don’t like to be thrown through windows. Two, Gideon Cain owes me for a perfectly good suit, and three, frankly, I had no wish to overstep our friendship boundaries as I did last night. He forced my hand in a number of things, and I’m... unhappy.”

“You’re unhappy?”

“I don’t like to be unhappy, Adam.”

I was definitely getting a whole murder vibe off him, and he had protected me from the shadowbeast. In truth, I needed him. I didn’t have anyone else. And Gideon had made it clear he intended to ruin me. “We’re... friends?”

“If you’ll have me.”

Did he really just want to be friends, or was there more to it? “What do you get from this arrangement?”

He sucked in a long, leveling breath. “The occasional taste?”

“Occasional taste of...?” His eyes narrowed. Ah, me. He meant me. “I see. Friends with benefits.” He’d already had an explicit taste of me. What were a few more bites in exchange for his help in saving Zee? “Alright. On one condition.”

“Another condition, besides saving the demon?”

“The demon has a name, and yes, the next time you need to—” I flicked a hand at my neck. “Take me out to dinner first?” That seemed fair.

He blinked and his eyebrows pinched. “I don’t typically date my food.”

Was he smiling, or was that just a twitch? “Are you being funny? Was that an attempt at a joke? Because it’s not funny—you’re not funny. Also, not a date. A courtesy.” If he was going to make me come so hard I passed out, then the least he could do was buy me dinner first.

“As you wish.”

His tone of voice was like chocolate to the brain, or chocolate lathered all over me, there for him to lick off. I really needed Zee back, so I could see the woods through the very sexy vampire trees that were watching me now through cat-like eyes. Uh, my throbbing head was full of chocolate and trees, and none of this made any sense. “Alright. So what did we learn?” I moved to the window and stood in bright sunlight, absorbing it into my weary bones.

Reynard sipped his tea. “Gideon Cain is a capable sorcerer, able to summon creatures from between the veil.”

The Lost Ones came from the world beyond the veil—a physical, solid, real world that had the same rules as ours, based on gravity and physics. Creatures from between the veil had no such limits, hence the shadowbeast being made of shadows, while also having the ability to crush the life out of me and shove Reynard through a window.

“Do you think that’s how he got a body in here?” I asked, remembering the very dead Mr. Reese, who we’d found face down at the foot of Reynard’s bed.

“I do.”

“Killed outside the hotel, and left here,” I mused aloud. “Like a smoking gun. Creatures with ill intent like that shadowbeast can’t manifest inside the hotel, not with the wards in place.”

“Manifest, no. But they can walk in like everyone else, and being made of shadow, they can pass unnoticed by most everyone inside.”

“Most everyone?”

“I have an affinity for shadows. I’ll sense if something is traversing them. But I cannot be everywhere at once.”

“You think he’s going to send it again?”

“I do. He made it very clear he will continue to disrupt the running of this hotel until he forces you to sell.”

If Zee died, I wasn’t sure I’d want to continue with the hotel anyway. He’d made everything easier with his boundless enthusiasm and crazy comments. It wouldn’t have been the same without him. But that wouldn’t happen. I was getting him back.

I rubbed my face and sighed. “If you can sense it, why didn’t you warn me during the meeting with Cain?”

“I did. If you remember correctly, I was trying to persuade you to leave when it attacked.”

I did recall him trying to tug me toward the door while I’d been yelling at Gideon. The sorcerer had shaken me to the core. I’d been exposed, afraid, and had lashed out, ignoring Reynard’s attempt to usher me out of danger. Not my finest moment. Nor were the moments after.

“Although, I didn’t realize he was summoning the beast, just that he was doing something maleficent.”

I lowered myself into the chair by the window. “It’s the signet ring, isn’t it? The ring he wore is its anchor. It needs an object to anchor it in this realm. If we can get that ring off him, he won’t be able to control the shadowbeast.”

Reynard considered it while sipping his tea. “He’s unlikely to agree to a second meeting.”

“And we don’t have time. He has Zee shut away somewhere, starving him of attention.” Zee was no pushover. The shadowbeast must have ambushed him not long after he’d left me in the elevator. But to surprise him, the beast must have manifested inside the hotel. But that wasn’t possible. Unless...

I shot from the chair and headed out of the room.

“Where are you going?” Reynard asked, appearing at my side in a blink.

“The attic.”

From the stairwell, a tiny door disguised as wooden paneling opened into a narrow, spiral staircase. Zee didn’t have to take the stairs—his wings wouldn’t fit—he simply manifested in the attic, but Reynard and I had to climb the spiderweb-infested staircase into the roof space. Zee’s perch by the small window was draped in morning sunlight, highlighting his absence, making my heart stutter and stall.

“What is this place?” Reynard asked, eyeing the beanbag and stool.

“Zee’s space.”

“Doesn’t he have a room?”

“Yes, but he likes it up here.”

“An odd choice of refuge for an attention whore.”

“It would be, except that’s not all he is.” I stood under the roof apex, with the old beams stretched above me holding up the main section of pitched roof. “He said there’s a space up here where the wards don’t reach. He uses it to get a phone signal.”

Reynard looked about us with renewed interest. “And you think that’s where the shadowbeast got in?”

“Seems logical.”

Reynard moved to the back of the roof, away from the window and toward the deepest, darkest corner of the eaves. He knelt and touched the floorboards. “Here.” He showed me the dust on his fingers, blackened, like soot. “Residue left over from the creature’s traversing of realms. You’re right, this is where it got in.”

“I’ll have Madame Matase seal it up.”

“No, leave it.” Reynard straightened and brushed dust from his hands. “Is this the only place you know of where it can enter?”

“I think so.”

“Then we know where it will come from, and we can trap it.”

“Trap it . . . how?”

“Leave that to me.”

“No offense, but it easily and spectacularly threw you out a window.”

“Because I wasn’t expecting a fight. Now I am.” His eyes and teeth shone in the low light.

“Alright, but we can’t just wait around for it to show up while Zee suffers. We need something to draw it out. Bait.”

“Or an event,” he suggested. “Something Gideon won’t be able to resist ruining.”

“A celebration?”

“Exactly.”

“Ooh, an opening party!”

“And once the beast arrives through this spot, we trap and torture it to within an inch of its existence, until it reveals where Zodiac is.”

Had his fangs grown longer and his eyes brighter? “Do you know how to torture a shadowbeast?”

Reynard’s smile turned positively vicious. “Torture is something of a hobby of mine.”

“Oh. Each to their own.” We had a plan—and it might even work. “Zee’s going to be pissed he missed a party.”

“If all goes well, Adam, we’ll save the demon before it’s over.”