Afterward, he finally slept.
In sleeping, he dreamed.
And in dreaming, he fell into the nightmare.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Dez walked the streets as rumors flew, whispered sightings of the king returning from captivity, bent on revenge. Hood’s coming back, the shadows gibbered. He’s going to take his woman and kill the man who stole her.
That Reese had never been—would never be—Hood’s woman didn’t matter. All that mattered was reality as the cobra de rey saw it. He had the streets that firmly under his spell even after all the work Reese had done to break the gang’s hold, with Dez at her back, keeping her safe, protecting her. Despite what she seemed to think, that was all he was trying to do now—keep her safe. And after Hood was gone . . . Well, Dez’s plans weren’t set, but he was working up to a big score, something they could both be proud of and that would take the sad, worried shadows out of her eyes.
So he walked the streets, listening to the whispers and watching for his moment to finally take the bastard down, once and for all.
He hadn’t been able to repeat the crazy electric magic he’d wielded that night in the storm, but he was armed with more than just the guns on his hips and the knife on his belt. The small black statue tucked into an inner pocket reminded him of everything he had already survived, its solid presence giving him the confidence he had lacked. And the ring box concealed on the other side, right over his heart, reminded him what he was fighting for—his rightful place, his rightful mate.
As he skimmed past Warehouse Fifteen, he avoided the tunnels and stayed visible, out in the open, partly hunting, partly waiting to be found. “Come on, come on,” he muttered as he turned down the alley beside Seventeen. His gut said that the bastard was very close by. “What are you waiting for, you sons of—”
Figures exploded around him, four guys closing fast.
Adrenaline spiking, Dez spun, ducked a swinging pipe and jammed a shoulder into a hard gut, sending the guy flying back on his ass with a bunch of “motherfuckers” spewing out of his mouth. A strange, humming sense of power flared in his bloodstream, making things sharper—smells, sights, and sounds were all amplified. He felt the weight of his clothes, the faint drag where the black statuette outweighed the ring box, pulling his leather slightly askew as he spun past a knife slash and kicked a second guy’s leg out from underneath him, sending his knee sideways.
He recognized all four of the guys—they were part of Hood’s top muscle, his enforcers—but their guns were tucked, their weapons seriously old-school, heavy on the crowbars and chains. That said Hood wanted to take Dez himself, but wanted him tenderized a little first.
Fine. He could have it his fucking way.
Dez ducked the third guy a little too slow, let the meathead tag him with a glancing blow on the back of his skull, and reeled like a drunk. They closed on him, kicking and punching, and getting in a couple of good whacks. He took the beating, held on to consciousness as they frisked him roughly, pulling the .44 and the carved stone knife he had paid an arm and a leg for, and was probably fake anyway. One guy pocketed the weapons, another took the statuette and the ring box. Dez forced himself to let them go—temporarily—memorizing which pocket they went into as the enforcers dragged him off the street and through a main door into Seventeen.
Hood was waiting for him in a pool of light that came down through a broken window high up on the wall, like he was trying to seem divine or some such shit. As far as Dez was concerned, he just looked like a thug, with prison tats on his knuckles and a fanged sneer creeping across his pasty-assed face as he watched his enforcers drag a woozy Dez over. Around the edges of the warehouse, shadows drifted and whispered, outer-ring gang members looking to get some attention, or maybe just a free show.
“Where’s your girlfriend, Mendez?” Hood licked his lips. “She back at the apartment getting all pretty for me?”
Rage poured fire into Dez’s veins, but he kept himself limp.
Hood scowled at his enforcers. “You weren’t supposed to kill him. Just quiet him down a little.”
“Got a soft head for such a big bastard,” one said with a shrug. He held out the statue and the ring box. “Had these on him.”
The fanged bastard’s face lit like it was Christmas. “No way.” He grabbed them, shoved the statue in his pocket and practically drooled over the ring, gloating before he even got the box open, saying it over and over again: “No fucking way!”
On one level, Dez was snarling with rage. Don’t you fucking touch it. But on another, he was cold and calculating, watching as a second enforcer crossed in front of him, reaching too eagerly into his coat and paying more attention to the thought of adding another present to Hood’s stocking than he was to his positioning.
“He had this on him too.” The guy pulled the carved stone knife, started to offer it to Hood.
Dez intercepted it. Moving faster than he ever had before, spurred by something he didn’t understand, he grabbed the knife, buried it in the enforcer’s throat, and yanked sideways hard and fast. Blood geysered, splattering him and getting in his mouth with a salty tang that just ramped the rage higher. He went down with the first guy, got his .44 back, and nailed two more of the enforcers while they were still gaping and going for their guns. Bullets killed far more neatly than the knife, he discovered at that moment, but there was no added buzz with so little blood. He skipped the fourth guy, ignored the shadows, and zeroed in on Hood.
Then he got the buzz, hard and hot, as he locked on his enemy. Kill, something whispered inside him as Hood spun and took off, his mouth splitting in a yell that Dez couldn’t hear over the voice inside his head, the one that was saying, Kill him and take what is rightfully yours.
Roaring, he lunged after Hood, taking him down with a tackle that sent them both sprawling. He recovered first and got a knee into the small of Hood’s back as the bastard scrambled and yelled, trying to get free, to get away, a schoolyard bully bolting when things weren’t going his way. Dez dug in the other man’s pocket and got the black statue, felt the kick of power and righteousness. Kill him now. He grabbed Hood’s forehead, bowed his head back with one hand and slashed his throat with the other. Then he held him there, the wound gaping, the arterial spurts jetting out and painting the warehouse floor as the bastard shuddered and went limp beneath him.
Dez smelled the blood, tasted it, felt it on his skin. It took him to another place, another time, and something whispered: head and heart. They were the seat of a mage’s power, the ultimate sacrifice to the gods.
Breathing fast now, barely aware that the shadows had closed in and two guys were holding them off, he flipped Hood over. The bastard was glassy-eyed. Dead. Dez took the knife to his jacket, his shirt, baring a caved-in chest that seemed too narrow for all the things Hood had done. Metal gleamed at the dead man’s throat, a thick chain that triggered a spurt of possessiveness, a sense of the inevitable.
But first . . . He knelt beside the body, lifted the knife, and—
“Dez!” The word was just a whisper, but it cracked through the warehouse like a bolt of lightning and nailed him right in the heart. He jerked away from the corpse and lurched to his feet. The room spun around him as he looked up.
Reese stood just inside the warehouse, haloed in the light that spilled in through the door she had left open at her back. She was holding her .38 at the ready, had more firepower slung across her back. She had come to back him up, but her eyes were wide, dark, and hurt as she took in the bodies, the enforcer, the gang shadows— fifty of them, a hundred, with hungry, calculating eyes—and him, covered with blood, holding a knife that dripped onto the floor.
In the distance, a police siren started up. She must have called them when she heard the shots.
Damn it. He had wanted to keep this under wraps, under the radar. But now . . . shit. He didn’t know what came next. This wasn’t how he had pictured it looking, how he had imagined it feeling. Part of him was sick as shit, puking in a corner of his mind, terrified that what he’d done was inside him. He wanted to go to her, grab her, and run like hell. But another part of him saw a door opening, a new opportunity presenting itself. Another way to get them up and out, and make sure she was safe from men like Hood.
But safe or not, her face was etched with horror.
