CHAPTER ONE
“This asshole’s head is mine. I mean it, Tanek.” Zander swerved the truck down a shadowed side street, the squeal of rubber on road echoing off brick buildings. The dark fury in his blood had him lit to explode. That he could even drive astonished him. He couldn’t believe any Otherworlder—Dark or Light—could be so massively stupid.
“He’s headed for that alley, Z. Get closer.” Tanek popped the passenger door open and swung out onto the step bar. “Man, this one’s quick.”
Quick? The pro-wrestler build of their bad-guy was deceiving as hell, because boots to asphalt, the daemon ran Usain Bolt fast—even with the added weight of an unconscious blonde slung over his shoulder.
A growl rumbled deep in Zander’s chest. Nothing ranked lower in his playbook of evil than daemons who preyed on innocent females, except maybe a daemon who preyed on innocent females who happened to be at his nightclub.
Zander strangled the steering wheel as his foot ground harder on the gas. As the Navigator’s engine revved, he banked a hard left down the alley. The tires screamed into the night and he almost lost Tanek. The space between the buildings was tight, the walls zipping past on both sides of the truck in a blur.
There wasn’t much in life or death Zander cared about—except maybe pissing people off. Celestial guardian. Soulless assassin. Despised bastard. Meh, all one and the same. He was Nephilim, and this daemon would be schooled in what it meant to provoke a Soldier of the Choir.
“My club is a safe zone, Tanek. My house. My kill.”
“Victori spolia,” Tanek said, launching off the side of the truck. His size fourteens landed heavy, his momentum pitching him into a run.
“To the victor goes the spoils, my ass.” Zander stomped the brakes and slammed the shifter into park. He bailed out and tore down the alley after his commander. The guy’s leather vest flared like a cape behind him, the Nephilim runes etched into the back, glimmering silver under the lights of the sleeping city.
Lost in the shadows, Tanek unsheathed his blade and Zander followed his lead. Three a.m. in an industrial section of Toronto’s fashion district left few humans to witness the excitement, but it only took one industrious looky-loo with a cellphone and the Otherworld was exposed and going viral on the internet.
“She isn’t human,” Tanek said, over his shoulder. “Could be worse.”
Zander checked the sightlines from the rooftops and wondered how Tanek did it. The guy still spouted optimism and he’d been trapped in this thankless existence longer than any of them. They barrelled through another back alley and spooked a pair of scavenging raccoons. The rotund little bandits scattered in a flurry of hostile chatter.
Yeah, human would be worse.
One tenet galvanized all members of the Otherworld. It had nothing to do with character alignment or their feeding needs, whether blood, flesh, spirit, or fear. It had everything to do with the food source.
Humans must remain oblivious.
The two of them hurdled overgrown boxwoods, their boots propelling them through backstreets, around graffiti-covered dumpsters and over broken wooden skids littering their path. Most nights, obstacles kept the chase interesting, but tonight Zander wanted to skip the calisthenics and get straight to the decapitating part.
Shit. They’d lost visual.
Tanek vaulted over a concrete barricade and signaled for Zander to flank left and cover the next building. Zander changed course. They weren’t out of this. The only place the daemon could take cover was in the cluster of dilapidated, two-storey warehouses ahead. Working a quick and dirty grid, they melted into the overcast night, cranked door handles and eyeballed what windows they found.
Zander focused his energy and summoned his gift. With a low-level current arcing within his cells, he scanned the area, his senses heightened. He itched to detect the acrid scent of daemon. He strained for any movement shift or the faintest rustle in the distance. He sensed—nothing.
August air hung deathly still and heavy in his lungs, no breeze to carry scents and no sound of movement to point them in the right direction. He wiped a wrist across his brow and cursed. The storm brewing over Lake Ontario flashed angry strobes and threatened its wrath.
As he ghosted across the next loading ramp, his electrical mojo did its thing and his head cranked around. Zeroing-in on a piece-of-shit factory two units over, the hair on the nape of his neck stood at attention. Gotcha.
Zander whistled for Tanek to follow and pistoned forward.
The building stood an inspired tribute to post-war ramshackle and as he back-flatted against the red brick, clay detritus crumbled onto the walkway. He sidestepped toward the metal door and sucked in a lungful—
Fuck. The stench of death and ode-to-campfire tunneled into his sinuses—the all too familiar mix of rotting human flesh, terror, and brimstone. A daemon kill-zone.
Now, the trip into industrial-landia made sense. Isolated after dark. No nosy neighbors to hear baleful screams from within. And no way for him and Tanek to guess how many of Hell Realm’s army lurked inside.
While his lungs sucked in more incentive to decapitate, Zander retrieved the Moonstone from his vest pocket. In the heartbeat it took Tanek to join the party, Zander brushed a thumb across the feldspar and uttered the words to fire the ancient runes to life. Heaven’s light erupted from the stone and sliced the darkness.
Good to go. Well, aside from having no idea what species of daemon they faced annnnd the fact that this whole snatch-and-chase scenario made his skin tingle. On that thought, he retrieved his phone and messaged Kyrian their location.
Ironically, the bigger the army inside, the better it was for the kidnapped female—cocky daemons were stupid daemons. No matter what flesh-eater species they chased, if that asshole had his entire nest inside, he’d be less likely to open a portal back to Hell and take his victim to go. And no way was he making off with his catch of the night.
Tanek grabbed the steel door handle and raised a three-finger count.
Three. Two. One.
The penetration was textbook. The incursion precise. Zander panned side-to-side and pressed forward in a rush. The Moonstone lit a twisted world unlike any he’d seen in two millennia. Human corpses littered the concrete floor and clogged the corners, slumped nine and ten deep. Throats torn out. Blood dried black and caked thick with flies.
His eyes burned from the stench.
Everywhere light panned, it illuminated snapped ribs, chest cavities cracked wide, and gaps where vital organs were missing. He cursed the suction as he walked through the half-clotted aftermath. Gore squished and squelched under the tread of his boots.
Tanek fired up his Moonstone and banked left. He disappeared behind a metal wall that divided the warehouse down the center. Zander took the right—
The attack came fast and low.
Zander’s boots found no purchase as two hundred and fifty pounds of daemon hit like a diesel train. Flying sideways, they landed hard. The tackle’s momentum slid them, as one, over the gory concrete floor. The Moonstone jarred from his hand.
Despite the face full of coagulated human and the sudden plummet into darkness, Zander wasn’t down. Once the plasma slip-and-slide ended, he sliced through the elbow clamped around his chest. The hellspawn’s wail made him smile as the limb detached and he clubbed his attacker in the head. To beat the bastard with his own arm amused him to no end.
“You’ve been dis-armed, flesh-muncher,” he said, clocking him again. Movement had him spinning for the incoming attack. Third man in. He couldn’t see much but lunged with all his weight. His hands and hilt were slick with blood, but he’d experienced it all a thousand times before.
A blade sliced hot into his torso.
The steel penetrated the muscle just below his ribs. The burn of his flesh ramped his incentive to kill. Grace erupted through his bloodstream. The tidal wave of sweet-fire lava refueled his flagging energy and initiated his healing. The only perk to being an archangel’s bastard offspring was the all-consuming high Nephilim got when they embraced the violent duty they’d been bred for.
Grace was fortitude. It was strength. It was power.
With lethal force honed to precision, Zander leveraged his weight. He punched, kicked and tore at his enemy until two severed heads fell with meaty thunks to rest amongst their human victims. Life for life, eye for eye.
He cleaned his blade on a headless corpse and tested the gash on his side with his fingers. Punctured just above the hip, it stung, but no vitals hit. Angel mojo ran hot in his blood. He’d heal within the hour.
He swept his boot against the floor and frowned. His Moonstone was a lost cause. He’d have to scan the warehouse without it. The only break in the darkness came courtesy of a few enterprising rays of moonlight that managed to squeeze through three milky skylights and a couple grime-covered windows on the far wall.
Where was the daemon runner? And where was the female?
Zander hadn’t gotten anywhere with either question when his Watcher’s mark burned ice-hot. The two daemon lives etched their way into his flesh. The filigree history of his kills expanded down his thigh and across his quad. The branding was the easy part, the transfer of power was what sucked. He clenched his teeth as vaporous streams of dark energy rose from the bodies and wormed into his eyes, ears, and nostrils.
The violation was horrid. Every. Damn. Time.
He locked himself down and waited for the malevolent souls to feed the darkness within him. The two were weak. Not much of an addition to his strength, but not much taint to his soul either. Not that he possessed much left to corrupt. As the sting clawed across his skin, Zander adjusted to the burden and tightened the tether on his most violent impulses.
Something shifted behind him. A blast exploded.
Electrical energy overloaded his cells. His vision fritzed and his tracking shut down. Daemons closed in. A blow snapped his head back. A strike to his ribs forced the air from his lungs. Falling to his knees, a brutal bombardment rained down on him. He cursed his weakness.
The blonde would suffer. He’d failed her.
Zander woke in a rush, his heart hammering. His breath came quick and short. Bound and chained, he forced his legs to accept weight beneath him. He felt like he’d been run over by a tank—make that a convoy of tanks. The way his brain pulsed inside his skull, it wouldn’t be fair if he wasn’t at least suffering an aneurysm. He wasn’t sure—because he couldn’t open his eyes at that moment—but there was a good chance some bastard pried gray matter from his head with a hatchet.
He breathed deep. An olfactory overload filled his sinuses and settled bitter on the back of his tongue. Daemons. Rotten flesh. The night’s highlight reel began an infuriating playback and he forced his eyes open.
The face of his Rolex glowed against the darkness. He twisted to read the numbers and pain speared his side. Almost four a.m. Hours had passed. Where was Tanek? How the hell had Darkworld scum caught them unaware? He tilted his head to his shoulder and tried to brush a mass of tangled hair from his eyes. No luck. It caked to his face with sweat and blood.
Movement on the opposite side of the warehouse made him tense. Those daemons had another thing coming if they thought he’d play their punching bag twice. He tracked the sweeping beam of light as it grew brighter. The squelch of footsteps grew louder. He tested the hold of the manacles above his head. They didn’t budge. His feet then. He could grapple around the daemon’s waist and—
“Ah, Zander, you’re awake.”
Zander exhaled as Kyrian rounded the center wall. The Moonstone’s beam highlighted his brother-in-arms. The son of a Greek senator and a well-respected general in his human life, Kyrian wasn’t a leather and chains barbarian like the rest of them. He wore his Watcher’s vest over a black button-down and slacks, with New Rock boots to accent.
His pale green eyes shone silver in the dim light. “What happened here, Z?”
Zander went over the night’s events and brought Kyrian up to speed. “And during the Quickening, an energy bolt nailed me. No idea what happened after that.”
“It’s lucky you were even at the club.”
He hadn’t thought of that. Had he and Tanek been on patrol as scheduled, no one would have witnessed the abduction and given chase. If not for a last-minute change in their plans, this daemon would have gotten clean away.
“Why weren’t you on patrol?”
Zander shrugged. Tanek had caught wind of something and wanted to talk in private. The daemon grabbed the female before they’d gotten to it. “Has Tanek checked in?”
Kyrian scanned his phone and shook his head. “When neither of you answered, the twins and I came to check things out. We found two bodies doing a headless horseman impression in a plasma puddle over there and then we found you unconscious and shackled to the wall here with her.” Kyrian shifted his Moonstone’s beam just as the power came on-line.
Zander squinted against the fluorescent lights and his gaze followed the delicate arm suspended and handcuffed to his own. Hello. He scanned the naked, unconscious woman attached to him. “It’s been eons since I woke in bondage.”
Kyrian smirked. “And without the pleasure of a week’s festivities first.”
Zander shook his head and regretted it. He’d taken enough cracks to the cranium over the centuries to know better. While his brains sloshed inside his skull, he wondered how he’d ended up handcuffed to a woman and shackled to a wall. The absence of context felt as if someone had taken the horror novel of his life and ripped out a chapter—or three.
The brunette hung suspended next to him, her head lolled forward. Long, chestnut hair created a veil over her face and chest. Dozens of round bruises marred her flesh. Dozens of rocks lay scattered at her feet. “They stoned her?”
From one heartbeat to the next, Zander’s world shifted. No longer a warrior, fierce, and lethal, he was a child. An abomination they’d called him. They’d stoned him and his sister. He hadn’t died. Niobe had.
“Z?” Kyrian said. “Zandros? What’s wrong?”
Zander’s attention swung back to the woman. The hair. The skin tone. Impossible. A trick? His sister was dead.
He hauled on the arm bound only to the wall. He yanked past the tearing of flesh against shackle, past the shearing of his muscle. He pulled until his shoulder began to dislocate and then pulled harder. The wall bracket let off a crack as it broke from above. His left arm hung free, his right remained cuffed to the woman and the wall.
Stone chunks rained onto the floor. His fingers shook as he swept back the curtain of hair obscuring her face. Flesh against flesh shocked him. He drew a deep breath. Not her.
An eerie similarity. But different. It wasn’t her.
Kyrian cleared his throat, staring at him as if he’d gone Hydra and grown a couple extra heads. Seth and Phoenix were there too. Had Kyrian said the twins were there? He couldn’t remember. They stared at him too—like a pair of massive Egyptian bookends.
“What?” Zander said.
“Well,” Seth said, his hulking body uncharacteristically still, “you’re glowing, Z. Your mark is throwing off light, like Times Square at New Year.”
Zander looked at his bloody arms and lifted the hem of his soaked, Back in Black-T. The extravagant fretwork that covered his flesh glowed a brilliant blue. Invisible to human eyes, the tattoo served to piss off members of the Darkworld and awe members of the Light.
He’d never heard of it lighting up.
He blinked past the throb rooted deep in his skull and tugged down his shirt. “Maybe it’s the energy bolt that hit me during the Quickening. It overloaded my juice somehow.”
Ignoring the peanut gallery’s skeptical back and forth, Zander focused on business. The female hadn’t moved. He hoped to the Hell Realm and back she’d simply blacked out and wasn’t—Shit. Human.
His knuckles cracked as his fists clenched. Of course, she was. This little tableau rang too perfect for her not to be. Don’t be dead. Not this time. He pressed two fingers to her slender neck and drew a heavy breath. Warm flesh and a strong pulse met his fingertips. “Well, score one for the good guys.”
She was alive, but out. Drugged? That didn’t make sense. They were in a feeding lair. Daemons who fed on human blood, organs, and tissue didn’t sour their kills with drugs. They overpowered them. Brutalized them. Harvested them.
Kyrian laid healing hands on the woman and shook his head. “No serious damage. I’ll fix her up as much as I can but leave her sore to avoid too many questions.”
“I thought you said the female snatched wasn’t human?” Seth said.
“I did. This isn’t her. Help me get her down.” Zander supported the woman’s weight with his one freed hand, while Kyrian and Seth worked on their restraints. Damn, she was a stunner. Long slender legs. Soft round hips. Perfect ass. Her breasts were larger than he would have expected from a woman of her stature, but for once he wouldn’t argue with the heavens.
He cursed. Was he really ogling a victim of daemon violence? Such a bastard.
“Phoenix,” Zander said, shifting his sights and loathing himself more than usual. “Find something to cover her.”
While Phoenix searched, Kyrian and Seth used their blades to make quick work of the wall shackles. The Nephilim weapon was wicked sharp and cut through anything. Always. Before now. The strange handcuffs that bound him to the woman, however, were another story. No matter what his brothers tried, the restraints remained unbroken.
He swept the floor clean with his boot and then eased the woman to the ground to take a closer look. The handcuffs weren’t police issue or the recreational kind he sold at his club. The heavy alloy and tarnished patina said these manacles weren’t from the human world at all.
“They’re spelled somehow.” Seth ran a hand over his dark, brush cut. “You’re good and stuck, my brother.”
Phoenix returned with a ratty blanket and a bungee cord in one hand, and a torn woman’s dress in the other. Both were bloody and neither worthy to touch her flesh.
“Forget that,” Zander said, “help me with my vest. If we turn it inside out, we can use the bungee cord as a belt.”
Seth frowned and shrugged out of his own vest. “Here, use my shirt.” As soon as he tried to dress her, he realized the difficulty. Her cuffed hand was attached to Zander’s and couldn’t go through the armhole. “Okay, yeah, let’s use your vest.”
Zander slid his warrior vest over their joined wrists, flipped it inside out and slipped the woman’s free arm through. Their size difference had the thing hanging to her mid-thigh but that was good. The bungee made a decent belt to hold the sides together, so all her essential parts and pieces were tucked out of eyeshot.
Zander eased the blade of his dagger beneath his belt at the small of his back. Having it sheathed anywhere other than its proper housing begged for trouble, but such was his night.
“I wish we had something better to offer her than a vest.”
Kyrian shrugged. “At least she ended up cuffed to a wall and tortured instead of hacked and stacked like her racemates on the other side of the warehouse.”
Zander glanced around at the aftermath of slaughter. He’d thought the massacre grizzly in the dark, but it was appalling all lit up. Why spare her? How had she ended up a placeholder in his own personal nightmare? He’d never told anyone about Niobe. Not Tanek. Not even Kyrian. The details were far too exact to be a coincidence. Somehow this was a message for him. A warning? A threat? He had no clue.
“Z?” Kyrian asked. “What’s going on with you?”
Zander forced it from his mind. “Just taking it all in.”
He slid down the wall beside the woman and winced when his ass settled on the ground. Wet heat soaked his hip. The stab wound through his oblique should have healed hours ago, but the hole still leaked onto his shirt and jeans. He didn’t understand any of this.
Kyrian knelt before him and pointed to the intricate symbols inscribed in the cuff’s alloy. “It’s a mix of the old languages, classic Hebrew, a few Arabic symbols, and I’d swear that’s Enochian. Danel should take a look.”
Zander didn’t want that Persian asshole anywhere near this human or him for that matter. “Forget him, I’ve got this.” He twisted his wrist and followed the inscriptions, first on his cuff and then on the woman’s. “It says something about death and destruction . . . blah, blah, blah.”
Kyrian arched a dark brow. “Really? Blah, blah? Well good then. I’m relieved it’s nothing serious. How do you suggest we remove them before she wakes up?”
Whether it was blood loss, exhaustion, or brain centrifuge, Zander couldn’t think of a single comeback. He’d forgotten more languages than most people knew ever existed, but Danel was the historian of their dysfunctional faction—gifted with ancient languages, runes, and hieroglyphs.
And he detested humans—as much as he detested Zander.
“It’s the right call,” Kyrian said. The Greek produced two cigarettes and his fancy Van Cleef lighter. “Danel can work his magic before she wakes up and the shit hits.”
Zander accepted the peace offering and inhaled. He didn’t smoke often, but Kyrian’s instinct was bang on. He let the custom-blend of tobacco sooth the night’s rough edges. Brushing his fingers over the cuff’s etched surface again, Zander exhaled. “Fine, call Danel. Tell him, with Tanek out of touch, I’m commander. Tell him I order him to get down here.”
Kyrian snorted. “Yeah, I’ll lead with that.”
Seth eyed him as Kyrian backed away. “You’ve got a serious grenade growing out of your forehead, Sumerian.”
Zander tested the contusion and hissed. To be immortal, but still feel pain and bleed like a sieve sucked ass. Part of this world, but not. Alive, but not.
“What did they beat you with, steel girders?” Seth circled a stack of harvested bodies and pushed the dislodged arm closer to the pile with his boot. “How the hell did a night-crawler knock you cold anyway?”
Zander hadn’t thought it possible, but there it was.
He eyed the twins and wondered if Seth or Phoenix would’ve been taken down in the same situation. The two were massive, even by Nephilim standards. Not bulging ‘roid-droid types, but they both carried skeletons so big, the weight and mass of their muscles stretched out and gave them a bad-ass vibe the ladies panted over. And then the identical twin possibilities kicked in, and the allure of Phoenix being mute cherried their karmic sundae.
Phoenix joined the group and signed that the perimeter remained secure. He untied the black bandana that covered his torn-out voice box and tossed it to Zander. The ragged, scar that encircled Phoenix’s neck never ceased to strike Zander cold. Though his throat was literally ripped out as a child, he couldn’t be killed. Despite the transition to his Nephilim life years later, his new powers couldn’t fix what was no longer there.
Zander cast a wary glance and blew human out of his nose.
Kyrian bowled a daemon head over and Zander stopped it with his boot. Piss-yellow eyes. Vertical slits. How could run-of-the-mill Shedim demons knock him for a loop?
“Good thing you tagged us in before breaching this little funhouse.” Kyrian’s gaze narrowed at him. “You sure you’re okay, my brother? You look weird.”
Zander waved off the TLC. “Where are we on all this?”
Seth stepped out of the walk-in refrigerator spanning the side wall and his shoulders filled the industrial doorway. “Some kind of processing plant—bodies out here, organ jars and innards in there. What I don’t get is how we could miss this much hunting off-quota.”
Zander had no clue. Nephilim didn’t work well together, true. Violent muscleheads were like that, but the eight of them had always been on top of the quotas in their city and suburbs beyond. A harvest this size should’ve set off alarms.
Kyrian checked his phone and frowned. “If Tanek tracked a target into Hell without back-up again I’ll lose my shit.”
“You won’t be the only one.” Seth bent over the closest pile of body parts and continued to inventory the personal effects. “The higher-ups only take so much broken protocol before they fry our balls. They’re probably sautéing the garlic now.”
Zander’s stomach churned. A fine line divided brave and stupid and the men in his garrison blurred that line more often than not. That pissed off the men upstairs—which wasn’t all bad. Can you say Daddy issues?
Though they looked like Ivy League gangsters decked out in white suits, archangels were intolerant bastards with contemptuous personalities. He and his fellow soldiers were immortal, but the archangels sired them and could end their existence with a thought.
If they gave it even that.
Phoenix whistled long and low and Seth jogged off to see what was doing.
Zander dropped his head back against the wall. He wanted to work, hated sitting there while his hands were tied, or cuffed as the case may be. “Kyrian, where the hell is the Persian?”
“I left him a message to get over here.”
“Yeah, and after he stops laughing maybe he’ll grace us with his presence.”
Kyrian smiled. “You wish. He’ll never stop laughing.”
Though Zander loved going head-on with Danel, with Tanek off-grid, he needed to lock things down. He gestured to the other side of the warehouse. “Call him back. I need this woman off my arm before we add exposure to the list. Remind him how the men upstairs feel about exposure. Maybe that will motivate him.”
Zander shifted his numb ass, primed to rip someone’s head off. “Seth, how many bodies are we talking?”
“Hard to tell. It’s a jigsaw of parts and pieces. I’d guess close to sixty—maybe more.”
Kyrian tossed a lit match on the Shedim bodies and the two corpses burst into ash. “How is that possible?”
It chafed Zander raw when the dark dealings of their reality touched the lives of innocents—but sixty? “Call the others. See if they’ve picked up Tanek’s trail. If he’s at O-Zone working off his night with a bottle of my booze, I’m gonna kick his ass.”
Seth nodded. “It’s strange we haven’t heard from him, Z, I get that, but he’s the Nephilim first-born and immortal. How bad can it be?”
Zander scrubbed through his matted hair. Seth was right, but the gnawing in his gut wouldn’t ease. Man, he needed to wash this night off his skin. “If the men upstairs aren’t aware of a mass slaughter on our watch, it’s simply a matter of time. We’re about to have our nuts twisted in a vice, and that’s without killing an innocent human because of exposure.”
Kyrian frowned and studied the woman slumped against Zander’s shoulder. “If we’re lucky, we can wipe her memory and get her back to her life. If she’s been kept on this side of the warehouse, she might be salvageable.”
Burying traumatic memories was tricky in a human’s underused brain without adding visuals like this to her psyche. If she’d soaked in all this Otherworld horror and they tried to wipe her, they’d either leave her a vegetable or need to put her down. The reality was harsh, but one human remained inconsequential next to the exposure of the Otherworld. If she knew what went on here and why . . . she was dead already.
As if his thoughts called her attention, a low feminine moan rose beside him.
“We’re outta time, here boys.” He tried to scoop her off the concrete floor and into his arms. Yeah, not with their bound wrists. On the second try, he slung her over his shoulder. The cuffs were awkward and the hole in his side protested, but he managed. Her weight barely registered, her body so delicate.
He scanned the room and shook his head. No avoiding the mounds of decay. “I’m taking her outside. Sanitize this place and we’ll meet back at the club.”