Hammer of Darkness (Veil Knights Book 8) Read online

  “Must you play with your food?” I asked, voice tight.

  Her finger traced the line of my jaw as she looked up. “I do not eat,” she whispered. “I dine.”

  I swallowed. Hard.

  Her fingers finished unbuttoning my shirt. She pushed it back off my shoulders until it bunched halfway down my arms, essentially binding me. She leaned in close and placed her hand on my chest over my heart, where the roaring lion head tattoo is inked. She wet her lips again as she felt my heart pounding against her palm.

  “Poor Berk,” she murmured. “Dante’s errand boy and all round meat shield. He’s willing to hand you over to something like me in order to get what he needs.” Her other hand slid around behind my back and she was close enough now for me to feel the heavy swell of her breasts push into me through the lace of her half bra. “How used you must feel.”

  “I am under his protection,” I warned. “Kill the Merlin’s retinue at your own peril, succubus.”

  She stood on her tiptoes and eased the press of her full lips against my throat. She kissed the side of my neck where my jugular ran. Her lips were searing, her tongue hot as she licked me slowly. Against my will I shivered.

  I tried pulling away but instantly the sharp blades of her nails pressed into the flesh of my back hard enough to open the skin easy as razors. She hissed, angry.

  “Do not move!” she demanded. She softened her voice and murmured into the hollow of my throat. “My game, my rules, Berk.” She reached down and grasped the front of my pants. Squeezed. “You’re just so yummy, I could eat you up, little boy,” her soulless eyes sparkled.

  “You’ve used the line before,” I chided.

  It was about as much disobedience as I could manage. Even that came like swimming upstream. Her eyes darkened, mouth turned down in disapproval. I knew apprehension.

  “Kiss me,” she ordered.

  I bent and did. Her lips were soft, her mouth strong. Her tongue teased against mine, demanding attention, and I began forgetting all the fear. She broke the kiss and her mouth found traced a wet line toward my sternum. She nicked my skin with her fang and blood ran down my torso. She lapped at it slowly, letting it smear across her tongue.

  Kay made a sound of protest. Euryale ignored her, I was too ashamed to look toward the Knight. This didn’t feel like a rescue.

  I drew my breath in sharply at the sting. I felt the urge to pick her up and throw her into the wall. To snap one of the legs on a kitchen chair and ram the jagged splinter into her chest.

  She growled, deep and low, down in her throat, an animal at her kill. I felt her bloodlust surging and knew if I moved against her express will, I would die. Her fingers were strong, uncompromising, as they held me. The nick on my chest spread and more blood seeped out. She began to nurse.

  She lifted her head, beautiful face carved from ice, eyes a depthless black, her lips wet with my blood. I felt jolts of adrenaline-current running wild through my body. I had never been so utterly desired before in my life, I realized. Because no mortal thing could hunger this badly.

  She pushed and I went over backward easy as a child onto the bed beneath her strength. With feline speed and agility, she mounted, straddling me. By the time she drew back those scarlet lips and revealed her blood fangs I was no longer fighting her even in my heart. I turned my head to the side, exposing my neck in sacrifice.

  Time grew opaque and I swam up out of the darkness, weak, listless, spent. I tried to look, to see, but I couldn’t turn my head, it weighed a thousand pounds. Euryale’s face appeared above me, fangs dripping with my blood like water out a culvert.

  “Your stamina was always impressive,” she said.

  She had that about her, I realized. That way of giving weight to certain words. It was an imperial habit, something you’d find in a stage actress from a bygone era. Hell, she could have been a stage actress from a bygone era for all I knew.

  Her lips branded mine in a savage kiss. I felt new strength surge through me in answer to her glamour. I tasted my own blood on her tongue as I kissed her back. She’s right, I’m an Ironman, I do have stamina.

  It didn’t feel like a blessing.

  Fingers unyielding as iron bars grasped my jaw hard enough to hurt. I blinked my eyes open, but my vision remained blurred. I got an impression of her, felt her body, burning hot with my blood, rubbing along mine. Her tongue lathed me, her saliva soaked into me like a narcotic.

  She’d opened a dozen lacerations across my torso and I ran slick with my own blood. She licked my body, taking her time. I tried to raise an arm, but it was made of lead. I was cold. Listless.

  She slid up me, voice in my ear. The dead don’t breathe, but they move air to speak and her breath was a jungle breeze in my ear, hot, humid. Her voice was no longer human. She was a creature, a thing, a cannibal corpse, and I was food.

  “Amazing,” she moaned. “I’ve never fed so deep, but still you live.” She licked my ear. “How I wish you weren’t Grimm’s field hand, I’m just dying to see how long it takes to drain you.”

  I turned my head and saw myself in the mirror on the closet door. She’d played with me, drank her fill, then bathed in me like a fountain. My blood streaked her body in stripes of scarlet and crimson. My blood stained the white sheets red. My face was a mask of it, eyes staring dead and almost sightless up from the hollow pits of their sockets.

  I watched her bend her head and once more her incisors opened me, her lips sealed over the wounds, there was the pressure of her sucking, and she drank. I was cold, my body numb. I tried to blink but couldn’t open my eyes again after I closed them. I heard my blood gurgling in her throat and my fingers dug into the knotted sheets but could find no traction.

  Once more I fell into the dark.

  I opened my eyes. She stood above, me looking down. She smiled, mouth clean, fangs rescinded. Her tongue came out and gently licked the corner of her mouth where a bit of my flesh stuck. The painted on dress she wore was spotless, revealing, expensive. Her beauty glamour burned with bonfire intensity, utterly gorgeous in my eyes. I blinked and saw only a lich made of dead flesh.

  “I have not enjoyed myself so much in so long. I hate to leave,” she told me.

  I tried to speak but my voice wouldn’t work and I merely croaked something unintelligible. She chuckled and patted me on the head like a pet. I was a pet.

  “You just let me know when you’re ready to traverse the doorway,” she said. She indicated her head toward where Kay sat, still bound, tears running down her cheeks. “This one can show you the way.

  Chapter 13

  I don’t remember calling Erica. I opened my eyes and she was there. She whispered quietly in what I can only assume were motherly, nurturing tones.

  “Water,” I managed to say, then promptly sank back into the darkness of exhaustion.

  I woke again with her dripping water into my mouth from a washcloth. I lay there and swallowed the dribbles. After a while she took another cloth, this one warm and soapy and began bathing me. She was gentle, thorough. This wasn’t the woman I had known years before, or even the night before. I began to wonder, for the first time in a long time, what else I didn’t know about her.

  I blinked. It wasn’t Erica. It was Kay. She’d freed herself somehow and was dressed in some of my clothes. She looked concerned. I peered at her, making sure she wouldn’t shift on me again.

  “I’m sorry.” I said in a whisper.

  “For what, Berk?” she asked.

  “For taking so long to find you.”

  “Everything is alright now.”

  “I don’t feel alright,” I admitted.

  “These cuts are shallow,” she said. “But they just keeping seeping. You need a hospital.”

  I shook my head no, though it cost me. “The things excrete an anticoagulant in their saliva. The cuts will heal.”

  I gestured toward the black side table where I’d placed my attaché in the top drawer. Silly me, I’d thought I’d be able to use the
supplies myself. I couldn’t do anything myself at the moment.

  “Top drawer,” I said, voice weak. “The briefcase.” She looked like she was about to argue. I reached out and laid my hand on hers. I was too weak to grab it. “Please.” I begged, my voice a croak.

  She took my hand in both of hers, they felt oven-hot. Tears ran down her face. Her bruised and beautiful face. “You’re so cold,” she said.

  “Briefcase,” I repeated. I was afraid of passing out again. I made what felt like a Herculean effort and squeezed her hand weakly. “Please.”

  She nodded once and wiped her tears from her face in an angry gesture. As she got the briefcase I noticed she’d stripped the bloody sheets from the mattress and dumped them in a pile on the floor. She’d covered me with the towels from the bathroom.

  “There are some orange pills in there,” I said. “Just two or three. Get one and put it under my tongue.”

  She rummaged through the valise style case. “What are they?” she asked. Finding them, she pulled them out.

  “Adderall,” I told her. My voice was still very hoarse.

  She froze in the act of giving them to me. “Berk,” she said, “you’re hypovolemic. Your heart is working at red line RPMs to keep your body oxygenated. You throw amphetamines in there on top of it, you’re begging for a heart attack.”

  She wasn’t wrong. Initially I’d wanted cocaine, figuring the much shorter half-life would be a safer bet. But I decided not to risk it in case Fallows sent his cops after me. Any pretense and they’d shove me in a hole, lawyer or no lawyer.

  “It is what it is,” I said. “I’ve got to walk out of here under my own power.” I smiled. From her expression it must have looked ghastly. “I’m hard to kill, Kay.”

  “Up until you’re not.”

  “Kay, please.”

  She gave me the pill. I put the tablet in my mouth and the amphetamine salts began melting under my tongue. While I waited for the medication to absorb, Kay gathered my clothes.

  “I don’t know where I was,” she said. “I went to Euryale’s club after talking to a prostitute named Clarice, street name Candy.”

  “I know the little angel,” I said.

  “Yeah. Her glamour is very, very good. I didn’t pick up on her power until she hit me.” Kay looked away, clearly embarrassed. “I wasn’t expecting it and she put me down.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then I got to cross the Veil for the first time,” Kay said. “I think I was an offering.”

  “From Euryale?” I was confused.

  “No, I feel like she was just the transporter, a middle man. The ones she was dealing with were witches. Disciples of Moloch.”

  “Haven’t heard that name in a long time.”

  Kay nodded. “God of the Canaanites. The temple was a nightmare. The witches tortured me, but mostly I just waited in a cell. Then two of Euryale’s bully boys showed up and took me out. Then I was here.”

  Someone pounded on the door. Hard. Then I heard Erica’s voice shouting. “Berk! Goddamnit, Berk!” She pounded again. “Berk, let me in!”

  “You’re very popular with the ladies,” Kay told me, keeping her voice wry.

  “Right back at you,” I said.

  “You saw Cynthia?”

  I grimaced. “Twice. She likes you better.”

  Kay laughed and it made her seem younger as some of the weary stress melted away. Erica struck the door again. For such a svelte thing she packed a wallop. It sounded like a lumberjack battering away out there.

  “Let her in?” Kay asked.

  “That or she’ll break it down, besides she knows about the Basket.”

  Kay crossed the room. Erica pounded on the door, rattling it in the frame. “Easy,” Kay said. “Stop beating the door.”

  “Who are you?” Erica demanded. Even through the door she sounded suspicious. “Where’s Berk?”

  “Berk’s here,” Kay said. “Are you alone?”

  “Open the door and find out, bitch,” Erica snapped. She wasn’t afraid to overreact at a moment’s notice. She was actually really good at it. “I don’t care if you’ve been fucking him, honey. I have business.”

  Kay opened the door, wearing only my clothes. “Relax, little girl,” she said. “Your boyfriend is in no place for romance.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” Erica said automatically. She had that half-snarl tone in her voice that only came out when she was furious.

  Shoving Kay to one side, she entered the room. Kay looked surprised when she actually went back under the shove. Kay had had a hard time of late, but she was no pushover. She was the real thing, maybe not a Knight of the Veil, but certainly one of the most competent people I knew.

  Erica stopped mid-stride when she saw me. All the blood drained from her face and her eyes grew very big.

  “Don’t worry,” I got up. “I feel worse than I look.”

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “It’s better if you don’t know.”

  “Bullshit.” She met my eyes. “You made a deal with Euryale, that’s not hard to figure out, just look at you. Tell me what you’re doing.”

  I sighed. I did that a lot around Erica. I was in no position to argue and I didn’t have the energy to do so anyway.

  “You know the expression quid pro quo?”

  She almost smirked. “Who are you talking to?”

  I felt a strange surge of jealousy. I wanted to slap her. I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to slap her, then kiss her. Or vice versa. I didn’t know, she left me feeling very confused. I waved my hand, pulling myself out of my own nonsensical thoughts. I felt slightly stronger as the Adderall kicked in, soaking in through the network of shallow capillaries in my mouth.

  “I guess that sort of explains what happened here,” I said.

  Her eyes widened. They were a raw sienna; the effect was disarming. “The Lady in Black? You slept with a vampire?” she asked. She almost sounded shocked.

  “I agreed to let her feed,” my voice sounded defensive, even to my own ears. “The rest was sexual abuse by a monster.” Lacking anything else to say, I repeated myself. “It is what it is.”

  Anxious to change the subject, I found the energy to sit up. She put a hand, fever hot, on my shoulder to steady me. I was painfully aware of how close she was. I flared my nostrils and inhaled, breathing her in. I met her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “About before…”

  She came closer, taking in my wounds. “Shut up,” she said. Then, “You have to go. Fallows is coming.”

  “Let him come,” I shrugged. It was bravado.

  Erica shook her head. “No. He thinks you know where the Basket is. He’s dangerous now.”

  “He was always dangerous,” I said. “And I do know where the Basket is.”

  “You have to stop, Berk,” she said, stepping close. “I know I asked you to do this. But I was wrong. Wrong about how dangerous it was, wrong about how much control I had over Fallows. Wrong about everything,” she said. Our eyes met. She sounded sincere.

  “I’m not here for you, Erica,” I said. It hurt to admit it. “I never was.”

  She reached out with a finger and traced the line of my chest. It was a casual intimacy and I repressed a small shudder of pleasure. After what Euryale had done I craved the closeness like water to drink or air to breathe.

  "All of these tattoos," she said. "So much eldritch iconography," she mused. Her finger came to rest on my right pec, right above me heart and opposite the lion head. "And a Green Bay Packers logo."

  "Go pack," I said gravely, and utterly sincere. "They're the last nonprofit, community-owned team in the NFL. That has to count for something."

  She shook her head, smiling but her eyes remained rueful. I hoped it was from missing me. I said nothing.

  I cleared my throat, acutely self-conscious. "Erica," I said. "About the other day," I trailed off, she regarded me with a steady gaze. I couldn't read her. I looked away but kept talking. "I'm
sorry if anything happened you didn't want to happen. I didn't mean for anything--"

  "Shut up, Berk," she said. "It wasn't roses and soft music, but nothing happens to me unless I want it to."

  I nodded. I was getting tired of wallowing in my feelings for her. But after what had just happened I felt a little exposed and weak. It was time to pull my head out of my ass and go to work.

  Kay cleared her throat. “Hello, in the room. Still here and getting uncomfortable.”

  “Then leave,” Erica said without looking at her.

  “Not going to happen, Pain-in-the-Ass-Barbie.” Kay replied. As if to underscore her point, she pushed shut the door.

  I don’t know what Kay had lived through, though I had a fairly good idea. She was off her game and no one could blame her, least of all me. And, as for me, I wasn’t in any better of a position. I was weak as a kitten and one blink away from falling into a coma.

  We didn’t stand a chance.

  She swung the door closed and it exploded back in on her. Striking her, it sent her to the ground, startled cry ripped from her throat. Two men swept through into the room, dressed like accountants, but holding shiny new MP7's in the comfortable manner of veterans.

  I froze, hand reaching, as one of them pinned me with the blunt muzzle of his weapon.

  "Freeze! SFPD!"

  Two more plainclothes officers stormed in and the four gunmen not covering me cleared the room with fast, well-practiced economy. One stood over Kay, weapon leveled as the others went through the drill. She looked furious, and under that, maybe a little ashamed. She had nothing to be ashamed of, the beating she’d endured would have left anyone slow and I’d been zero help in my current condition.

  I wanted to tell her it wasn’t her fault but I couldn’t seem to keep up with what was happening. I looked at Erica but her face was a mask.

  “Clear!” one of the cops shouted.

  “Clear!” one answered.

  “Bathroom clear!”

  “The place isn’t that goddamn big, guys,” I said.

  Like a particularly thick child finally grasping a difficult math concept, I figured out they were Fallows’ boys, the Flying Squad. I should have taken more Adderall.