But Rian didn’t pull that pussy revolver he kept on his belt or even the I’m-compensating-for-something maglite. He jerked Mikal’s flaming sword out of thin air.
The sword set off something in my vamp brain, some survival instinct that was dedicated specifically to not getting my ass sent to Hell. I rolled off him and up to my hands and feet, crouched like a sprinter ready to run.
“Fucking family—worst fucking—every damn time I turn around!” he yelled, holding his broken ribs with one hand and stabbing the sword in my direction with the other.
I skittered back a couple steps. I could still hear Mikal screaming as they dragged her to Hell. I could smell the fire and brimstone and see the sick greenish-black color everything turned, the way they clawed at her and dragged her down.
Rian lunged again, sword-first. I backpedaled some more. His broken ribs weren’t slowing him down. They must’ve already started healing. In a minute, he’d be back to one hundred percent and I wouldn’t stand a chance.
Desty needed me. She was down in that basement with those assholes hurting her and putting their hands all over her.
But there wasn’t anything I could do. Not by myself, not against a couple hundred fallen angels inside their lair, and not against that sword. Not without dying and spending the rest of eternity in Hell.
Shit. Why didn’t I bring anything with me? A rifle, a grenade, that fucking katana—anything.
There really wasn’t anything I could do. I couldn’t help Desty. She was down there crying and I couldn’t do anything to stop it.
Rian swung the sword at me.
I turned around and ran.
“Coward,” he yelled after me.
The vamp speed kicked in and I was halfway to the road before I heard rifle fire behind me. One of the other guards must’ve spotted me hightailing it. A spray of bullets ripped into my shoulder and the meat of my arm. I pitched forward onto my hands, skidding in the loose gravel at the edge of the road. Vamp venom welled up and stuck my ripped t-shirt to the holes.
I pushed myself back up to my feet and kept running. What did bullets matter? I barely felt them, anyway. All I could think about was Desty crying and me leaving her behind. I was leaving her behind like the Goddamned coward I was.
But I was coming back. Hell yes, I was coming back, and every bit of shitstorm that I could bring down on Kathan’s head was coming with me.
Desty
I felt sick, ashamed, and so angry. The pain was more of an afterthought, something that had faded to the background of my mind, just a part of my new reality. I couldn’t stop what they were doing to me. I couldn’t do anything to end it. They were in complete control and I was nothing, just an object for them to play with.
The foot soldier who was in charge of “the entertainment” bit me. Like actually bit me. It hurt so much that I screamed. He and the fallen angels Kathan had brought downstairs laughed.
I hated them. God, I hated them so much. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to quit crying.
“Modesty, I want you to know that you can make all of this stop,” Kathan said. “I’ll give you a choice: agree to become my familiar, and I promise you, I will put an end to this.”
“Please, Desty,” Tempie said. “Just do it. Just say yes. Please?”
She sounded just like my sister. I could hear myself sobbing. Why was she with them? Why did she have to run away from home and try to kill herself like this? Why couldn’t she have done anything else? Drugs, prostitution, Ultimate Fighting, anything? Why wouldn’t she help me?
In the rational part of my mind, I knew Tempie didn’t have any more control over what she said or did than I had over the foot soldier who’d bitten me, but part of me still blamed her.
“Modesty?” Kathan prompted.
“Won’t work,” I whimpered. Blood and bruised lips and broken teeth garbled my words. “Didn’t before.”
“It will this time,” Kathan said.
So he’d found a way to make Tempie and me the same again.
He nodded at someone and stepped back. A second later, something icy and metal pinched the inside of my thigh. I screamed before it even happened, as soon as I realized that it was the pliers again. My skin made a ripping sound like tearing fabric, then there was nothing but searing cold fire down the inside of my leg.
“Now, Modesty,” Kathan said as if he were being perfectly reasonable, “Do you want him to continue or do you agree to become joint-familiar with your sister?”
When I realized what was happening, I felt this sick rolling in my stomach. Five seconds ago, hadn’t I wanted some kind of control back? Some kind of way to make them stop doing this to me? But now I couldn’t say yes. Kathan wasn’t giving me control. He was backing me into a corner, manipulating me into becoming his familiar just to stop the pain. Kathan was using me, just like the foot soldiers were. It was his fault I was here in the first place, and now he was asking me to choose between staying here and doing what he wanted me to. I felt like screaming again.
Before, I’d been able to agree to become joint-familiar because it was a matter of saving people—for whatever idiotic reason, I’d thought I was the one to do it. Now, though, he and the foot soldiers had turned my agreeing into a matter of admitting that I was beaten.
I had been beaten. I had been ready to do anything to stop them. If only they hadn’t changed the decision from “Help Your Fellow
