Three people enter the bathroom after he leaves. I jump every time, holding my breath as they march into an empty stall, imagining Vinny all the while. I tell myself that I could use the gun, even as my fingers hesitate to find the trigger.
I know instantly when Lucifer returns, however. The floors tremble with his presence. I’m already scrambling to my feet before he even knocks on the door to the stall, though when I try to push it open, it won’t budge as if he’s braced one hand against it.
“Gun.”
My hand shakes as I bend down to hold out the pistol from underneath the stall. He takes it and then shoves something else into my grip. The handle of a shopping bag I see when I carefully pull it into the stall. It’s black with the name of a boutique written in silver script. Cassandra’s. Inside I find a black sweater and a pair of dark wash jeans. While simple, they’re both high quality. There’s a pair of boots too: black leather with a low heel and a matching jacket.
Reeking faintly of perfume, they remind me too much of the carefully chosen outfits I’d left behind. I almost prefer wearing his clothes. “W-Why—”
“Put them on,” Lucifer commands.
I do so cautiously. The bastard guessed my size. Vinny’s personal tailor couldn’t have done much better. The shoes, however, are a little big. They clatter against the floor when I finally ease the stall door open and join Lucifer at the sink.
He found a coat as well: a black one that hangs down over his waist, hiding the shape of the gun tucked into his pocket. My clothes don’t do much to dispel the hollow creature staring back at me. I’m the demon to Lucifer’s imposing devil.
“Wash up,” he snarls, wrenching on the faucet and cupping his hands beneath the spray. I watch as he splashes a handful onto his face, scrubbing at the grit hidden within his stubble.
Stepping up to the next sink over, I turn the water to the hottest setting and just let it run, watching my section of the mirror fog beneath the heat. My hands sting and burn when I finally wet them, marred with a million tiny scrapes and cuts. There’s one on my forehead, dripping blood down my jawline. My bruised eye looks worse in the fluorescent lighting. Splotches of green and yellow mingle with the darker purple. My split lip is scabbed over, and my ear...
I grimace when I peel the duct tape off and toss it into the trash. The wound no longer bleeds, but the surrounding skin is red and hot to the touch. It hurts, I realize when I prod the flesh an inch away and still wince. For all I know, the wound could be infected. I dab at it anyway with clean water and cover the worst of the injury with my hair—which is a disaster I simply don’t have the time to manage. I do what I can with my fingers, smoothing the strands down around my shoulders.
Satisfied, Lucifer meets my gaze over the mirror’s surface. “Come on.”
I follow him out into the hallway and then out of the station itself. It’s raining. My jacket doesn’t have a hood, but Lucifer draws his low over his face and then steers me along by my forearm. We walk for what feels like blocks before he finally stops and pulls me toward a small café.
I dig my heels in. “N-No.”
We may have escaped Vinny once, but there is no way in hell that I’d sit and wait for him to find me.
“Come on.” Lucifer yanks me forward so hard that I nearly stagger into his chest. Before I can, he shifts, steering me sideways. “They expect us to run,” he says. I can’t argue with that. We were nothing more than mice let loose for the cat’s amusement. “They won’t expect to find us here. It’s safe.”
Safe. I scoff at his use of the word, but I don’t resist when he opens the door to the café and drags me inside. Our struggle out front must have caused a scene. What few patrons there have paused—some mid-sips in their coffee—to watch as we creep over the threshold. So much for Lucifer’s plan of going unnoticed. He grits his teeth, but he still muscles me into a booth near the back of the small dining room.
It doesn’t look like a place Vinny would frequent, at least. The walls are an inviting shade of lime green, and the floors are linoleum. A smiling waitress approaches us, her notepad at the ready, but I don’t miss the way her warm expression falters when she sees my face.
“H-Hi,” she stammers, licking her lips. “W-What can I—”
“Eggs,” Lucifer says curtly. He doesn’t even glance at the menu. “Scramble them. And coffee, make it black.”
“Okay.” The waitress jots his order down, and then both she and Lucifer turn expectantly to me. Seconds pass. Oh.
Vinny isn’t here to plan my meal down to the very last calorie. My fingers flutter over my placemat, and I reach for the menu Lucifer ignored. My eyes find the very first option, and I read it out loud. “The breakfast special, please.”
Smiling her strained grin, our waitress nods and takes off.
Left alone, Lucifer and I don’t waste time on small talk. He watches the door while I stare down at my hands. They shake, though I don’t know if it’s from adrenaline or shock, as my eyes drift over the devil seated across from me. It may have been my idea that kept us from being pinned like rats in a trap, but he was the one who listened to me. He didn’t question the paranoid delusions of a mad woman but staked his life on them instead.
I can’t understand why. Answers don’t present themselves when our waitress returns with his coffee and gives me a glass of ice water. I sip at it, careful of my sore lip, and merely watch.
There is something about my devil that makes the women gathered at the table across the room turn to stare. They draw their gazes down from his face to the rest of his body, stripping him naked in their minds to see the man hidden underneath. A man I’ve met more than once.
It feels so strange to acknowledge that without the threat of Vinny’s video hanging over my head. I knew what Lucifer looked like with his pants off. I knew what he felt like inside me. I knew the sounds he made when he climaxed. I knew the hue of blue on which his eyes could touch right before he threw his head back and bellowed out his release.
“Let me know if it’s too hot for you, darling.” I jump when the waitress sets a plate of steaming food down in front of me. She scrambles back while I sniff at two sunny-side eggs and two links of sausage. I poke at the meat with a fork fished from the table, but I can’t bring myself to eat until Lucifer piles a mound of scrambled eggs onto his own fork and shovels the lot into his mouth. He chews. I nibble. In silence, we both clear our plates and head out after he pays the bill.
Through the rain, we trudge up two more blocks to a bus stop and then we spend hours riding the same three routes. He doesn’t explain why, but I suspect it’s to confuse anyone who might be following our trail. My head spins by the time he finally steers us toward a new direction. We’re in a more distant part of the city now, closer to the outskirts. In the storm, there are only a few people out on the streets, but I feel eyes on us wherever we go.
With every step, my feet chafe within their new boots. By the time Lucifer pulls me to a stop, pain is a constant throb shooting through my calves.
“Wait here.”
For the first time, I glance around and take serious stock of our surroundings. We’re on a partially deserted lane in a neighborhood that has definitely seen better days. Dogs bark in the distance, and up ahead looms a shadowy dwelling with a long driveway reaching back into a section of woods. The whole property is cordoned off by a chain-link fence with a security panel affixed to the front of it, like the kind you might find outside of a high rise. Leaving me at the curb, Lucifer starts forward, his shoulders tensed and head bowed low.
So, this is their rendezvous point. It’s far enough from Vinny’s kingdom to avoid notice—that is if the red-haired man was half as cautious as Lucifer in making sure that he wasn’t followed.
When he reaches the security panel, Lucifer grumbles something into the speaker. A minute later, I hear a door open somewhere on the property, and a shadowed figure breaks away from the main structure to approach the gate. I try to observe them carefully, but Lucifer takes precedence when his gaze seeks mine out. He jerks his head for me to come closer and I do, every step cautious.
For the very first time, I consider running. He has to have expected it by now. I wonder if that’s why he keeps such a close watch on the gun. He’s willing to use it if he has to. On Vinny’s men. On me.
When I approach him, I look up, ignoring the drops of rain that dribble down my forehead. “When we go in there, I’m not his captive anymore.” I don’t have to mention the red-haired man by name. Lucifer clenches his jaw in understanding. “I enter this place of my own free will. I’ll help you take down Vinny, but only on my terms.”
Lucifer frowns. He doesn’t like being commanded, least of all by me. “And if I refuse?” he wonders, his voice deep enough to rival the thunder echoing over the horizon.
I shrug. “You trusted me already.” I inhale sharply and play the only card I have in my arsenal. “I saved your life—”
“You saved your own ass.”
“Exactly,” I agree. “If I wanted to go back to him, I would already be begging for mercy while your head adorned the wall of his study. I won’t run.”
Lucifer doesn’t seem so sure of that. He’s suspicious, my devil. I suppose that’s why he’s still alive. Stupid, evil men didn’t tend to live too long. Vinny’s brutality taught me that.
“He’s taken everything from me.” My voice tastes bitter with the five years of pain I’ve had to suppress. Memories threaten to spill out from the dark corners of my mind, and I fight to swallow them back. “I want to take something from him.”
Lucifer still doesn’t give me an answer. I’m a slave to the scrutiny of those blue eyes, frozen in place until he finally nods—just once, so quickly I may have missed it.
“You coming in?” A figure wearing a gray sweatshirt with the hood drawn low stands at the gate, holding it open.
I don’t answer, but Lucifer speaks for the both of us by stepping forward through the gap presented by the gate-opener. I follow him, my eyes on the dwelling up ahead. Apart from being secluded and well-guarded—which I sense from the human-shaped shadows lurking on the edges of the property—it doesn’t look like anything that would attract the interest of either Vinny or the red-haired man. Dogs bark somewhere nearby, and with every step we take, the stench of cigarettes and stale cologne gets stronger.
Up close, I realize that the property doesn’t contain just one house, but a collection of buildings. At the front of the property sits a main, square one formed out of brick. A matching detached garage rests a few yards behind it, and then another building looms slightly over the rest, perched on a small hill at the mouth of the woods. Neon decals flash from the square windows built into the lower level of the main building. Mack’s is written in red script on a sign hanging above a blue door. The man who came to the gate pulls it open, and pulsing music eagerly rushes out.
“After you.”
Lucifer enters first, his shoulders squared, his stance open and wary. Almost immediately, however, he relaxes, and I see why when I finally creep forward in his shadow.
The red-haired man sits on a stool on the other side of a narrow, packed barroom. When he sees Lucifer, he beckons him closer with a wave of his hand. “You made it.” He has to shout over the music—an angry pulse of hammering percussion and guitar riffs that I can feel in my bones. Lucifer grits his teeth and seems to have to physically keep his hands from slapping over his ears. Jerking his chin, he inclines for me to follow him through a crowd of men and women wearing an array of ragged clothing that Vinny certainly wouldn’t approve of: skirts more revealing than my “video costume,” ripped jeans, and dark leather clad this ragtag bunch. They eye us warily, and the moment Lucifer reaches the bar, the music shuts off.
“Dante.” The greeting comes from a tall man with closely cut dark hair who muscles his way through the crowd to approach Lucifer from his left side. He wears a leather vest, which hangs open to reveal a heavily muscled chest decorated in what seems to be an even mixture of scars and tattoos. “Long time no see.” The man extends a hand. There’s no hostility in his gaze, but Lucifer eyes his palm for a few seconds before slapping his own against it.
“Mack,” he says gruffly. His eyes cut over to the red-haired man as he speaks, and they share a silent look that I’m sure doesn’t go unnoticed by everyone else in the crowded room. Lucifer isn’t pleased by what I assume is a tense reunion.
The moment Mack draws his hand away, Lucifer steps toward the bar and jerks his shoulder in a subtle invitation for me to follow. I do, less out of obedience and more out of unease at the way the eyes of this stranger’s graze over my skin. Mistrustful. Hateful. Cold.
A choked sound catches in my throat as I bite back an irrational urge to snicker. Is this how Vinny felt in the few unguarded moments I looked at him and was too exhausted to tailor my expression?
No wonder he hit me.
“This her?” Mack inclines his chin toward me. His brown eyes linger over the v-neckline of my sweater, and he licks his lips. “Not bad.”
He takes a step toward me and nearly runs right into Lucifer’s chest. The devil says nothing, but I feel his presence all the way down to my bones. Possession. Is that what this is? His claim has a different flavor than Vinny’s. My skin prickles with his nearness. He may have already chewed me to pieces, but he isn’t quite willing to share me.
Yet.
“You’ve certainly done a number on her,” Mack ascertains. “Hey, Sammy!” He looks back at someone in the crowd and draws them out with a jerk of his chin. “Get over here.”
Lucifer doesn’t move, but suddenly he seems taller. The shadows lingering around the periphery of the bar converge on him, deepening the definition of the muscles evident even beneath the leather of his coat.
“Relax.” Mack laughs, but the carefree emotion isn’t shared by the others gathered around us. They tense and their eyes flicker from Dante to Mack and then Arno in the corner; it’s a silent tennis match. “Sammy here’s a doctor of sorts.” Grinning, Mack places his hand on the shoulder of the considerably shorter figure who appears at his side. Sammy is an older man, but he’s clean-shaven and seems nice enough—though his camouflage print slacks and gray wife-beater certainly don’t scream “doctor.”
“Damn.” He whistles, his bloodshot eyes on my face. “You’ll definitely want to get that ear looked at. Unless you want it to turn gangrene and fall off!” He chuckles at what was apparently a joke, but it seems lost on everyone else.
“Let Sammy check her out,” Mack suggests. “While she’s gone...we can have a little chat.” His smile widens, but Lucifer doesn’t bother to return it. There’s something he isn’t saying. Something that lurks beneath his skin and turns him to stone. Finally, he nods just once.
“Um...g-great.” Sammy takes a step toward me, reaching for my wrist, and once again Lucifer manages to dissuade anyone from touching me without even having to say a word. He merely inhales, and poor Sammy shrinks beneath his gaze and quickly hastens two steps back.
I’m not stupid enough to mistake his actions for protection. He’s merely guarding his investment. I’m a pretty little toy he doesn’t want tarnished too badly...Vinny wouldn’t want me too broken after all.
The thought gives me the strength to step around Lucifer, implying that I’ll follow without having to be forced. Sammy audibly sighs while Mack simply...watches. His smile never wavers, but there’s no ounce of joy in it. The man simply likes flexing his teeth, the same way a wolf does in the face of an opponent. He doesn’t take Lucifer’s lack of reaction as an insult.
He accepts it as a challenge.
For whatever reason, he doesn’t follow me when I head toward the back of the bar with Sammy leading the way. Whether he’s welcome to or not, Lucifer falls into step behind me, and I hate this part of me that feeds off his presence.
Alone, Lynn would shrink inside herself, trapped with all these unfamiliar men. She’d hate where their eyes leered as she crept past them, unsteady in her boots. Her heart would race, and she’d entertain—for a minute—that returning to Vinny wasn’t the worst possible fate a woman could face.
Arno and his brutes had been drunk on revenge. These men are driven by another thought that makes my skin crawl once I identify it. Greed.
I keep my gaze trained on Sammy’s brown curls, but I can smell the others. I hear them.
“Pretty little bitch.”
“Looks like she can take a hit. I wonder how many.”
“Hot piece of ass.”
It’s only when Lucifer takes a step closer to me that they fall silent. His heat burns through my back. His breath rustles the hair at the nape of my neck. It’s like he’s breathing his scent onto my skin—marking me in a way that even these animals are forced to respect. Does he do it out of duty to our private bargain?
Or merely because he likes exerting his authority over men who would be foolish to challenge him?
It’s an amusing thought to consider as Sammy finally comes to a stop before a wooden door decorated with strips of police caution tape.
“Ladies first,” he says while opening the door, revealing the small room beyond it. I’m surprised to find that it’s organized like a makeshift clinic. There’s a black recliner in the center and a row of counters against the wall, cluttered with trays of syringes and vials. So maybe less of a clinic and more like...a druggie’s paradise.
“I can t-take it from here,” Sammy says when Lucifer starts to follow me inside the room.
“Yeah, he’s got it,” another man seconds. Tall and imposing, he comes from nowhere to guard the door, conveniently inserting a foot in between me and Lucifer.
“Come on, Dante,” Mack playfully scolds from across the room. “Leave the women to their business.”
He’s outnumbered. I can sense his frustration in a single grunt that sends loose strands of my hair flying, but I suspect that I’m the only one who notices. The next second, he’s gone, heading toward Mack and Arno. The lack of his presence is like a Band-Aid being forcefully ripped from a wound. I don’t know if I miss it or if I’m relieved by its loss.
At least now I can bleed in peace.
“Step right up,” Sammy says with a nervous laugh as I tear my gaze from Lucifer’s retreating form and cross over the threshold. He gestures toward the recliner, and I settle onto the edge of it while the door shuts with the one thug on the other side of it.
Sammy eyes me carefully, clicking his tongue. “Let’s get a look at that ear.” He reaches for the hair on my right side and then hesitates as if silently asking for permission. I nod, and he withdraws the strands, groaning when he sees the wound up close. “Jesus! Did they let a fucking butcher take it off with a hacksaw?” He shakes his head at such a poor method of torture. “Sloppy. Just fucking sloppy.”
Muttering under his breath, he turns to the counter. There’s a long mirror hanging on the wall above it, and I studiously observe his hands as they flit over the scattered materials.
“It’s a bit too old to do much, I’m afraid,” he says. “Otherwise I’d attempt stitches. I can clean it for you, at least—” He glances over at me and winks. “I wasn’t kidding about the gangrene.”
From behind him, my reflection stares back. The haunted shell seems a little more animated now. There’s a harder line to her jaw that wasn’t there before. She’s on edge. She’s anxious. The man before her keeps sneaking glances at a vial of liquid when he thinks she isn’t looking.
“I should clean it with some peroxide, I guess.” He approaches me with only a bottle of alcohol in his hand and a wad of gauze.
Gritting my teeth, I force myself not to react as he methodically cleans what’s left of my ear, dabbing at the wound. The burning sting goads my eyes into watering, and I can’t suppress a wince when he presses too hard.
“Oops!” He drops a bloodied bit of gauze to the floor, and I automatically lean down to grab it—but he expects the motion. His fingers are already waiting to seize my wrist, holding tight while he jabs a needle fished from his pocket into my vein.
“Shhh.” His free hand traps my mouth as a searing heat shoots through my wrist. A drug. Whatever it is works fast. Already, my body feels heavy. It takes twice as much effort than it should to stick the fingers of my left hand into the pocket and find my knife.
After several tries, I clench it in my fist and jab it straight back, striking whatever is in reach.
“Son of a bitch!”
Sammy’s hand slips from my mouth, and I lunge from the chair, aiming for the door...but my legs move too slowly. I land on my side, my feet still tangled in the armrest of the chair. The fall knocks the air from my lungs. God, I feel so heavy.
“Fuck! Fuck!”
I can hear Sammy scrambling behind me before a crushing weight slams into my lower back. Grasping fingers graze the side of my jaw, seeking out my mouth again while I gather the strength to suck in one last gulp of air and release it on a single scream. “Dante!”