Chapter 1 - Present Day

   Dante rubbed his temples at the hairline, feeling the threat of his horns beneath the surface.

  Don’t let them come out. You’re at the office. No one needs to see your horns.

  “Boss, you need to – “

  “Shax, you need to stop talking,” he ordered, cringing at the mere sound of his right-hand’s voice. It was shrill and oddly deceiving for such an intimidating man yet after thousands of years, Dante had never learned to tune it out, despite his best efforts.

  If he wasn’t an efficient whirlwind, Dante would have burned him up with one powerful glare, he thought ruefully, half-hoping that Shax would disobey the rule and read his innermost thoughts.

  “Yes, boss,” Shax replied meekly and Dante sensed that maybe he had heard his silent words.

  As usual, all hell was breaking out, both literally and figuratively and Dante was left to sort through a pile of bullshit both on his desk and in his lair.

  “Where is Cheryl?” he asked after a moment. “Call her in.”

  Shax nodded his head and disappeared from the inner office, leaving Dante alone to think about the convoluted mess his life had become.

  With great power comes great responsibility, he mused but he couldn’t remember which philosophical asshole he was quoting. There were just so many from which to choose, so many mortals with quips but no solutions.

  No, it’s usually up to the immortals to find solutions.

  Shax returned a moment later, Cheryl in tow.

  “Yes, Mr. Carmichael?”

  “Our stock just plunged on the DOW because of that whistleblower report,” he informed her. He noted she maintained the same stone-faced look she always wore, as if he was not telling her anything she didn’t already know.

  “I heard,” she conceded, and Dante grimaced, wondering if she had known even before shit hit the fan. It wouldn’t be the first time his staff had kept information from him, fearing his sometimes “shoot the messenger” approach to bad tidings.

  “Well maybe you could schedule a meeting with PR and legal,” he growled sarcastically. “If that’s not taking away from your solitaire game.”

  Her blue eyes flashed and Dante felt better, knowing he had invoked some reaction from her. He knew that she worked hard, or else she wouldn’t be employed at Carmichael Industries. That did not mean, however, that she had license to provoke him.

  “Of course, Mr. Carmichael. Anything else?” Cheryl asked crisply.

  Anything else? He wanted to growl. Everything is going to shit because my former assistant can’t handle rejection. My company’s reputation is on the line and fucking hell is overflowing with applicants. Yes, there is much else.

  “No, that’s all for now.”

  Dante knew that it was not Cheryl’s fault he was on a rampage that day. Not that she wasn’t fair game if he chose her to be, though.

  She nodded curtly and exited the office, leaving the men alone to stare at one another over the steel and glass desk.

  “Tell me about Uvall,” Dante sighed, not really wanting to hear anything else. It was only eight-thirty and already he wanted to annihilate something. Or somebody.

  Not that it would do any good, but the sight of blood might improve his mood somewhat.

  “It’s nothing more than a rumor right now,” Shax explained. “I can’t even guarantee he’s in America, let alone Seattle.”

  “Well rumors start from somewhere,” Dante sighed. “Find out what you can about him. Put ears out on the Sapphire Strip and South Park. In fact, anywhere there’s an immortal presence, get ears.”

  “Of course, boss,” Shax replied, seeming grateful that he had gotten off so lightly.

  If he could experience such an emotion, a flash of guilt slid through him as he watched the wiry giant slink out to obey his orders.

  Maybe I’m too hard on all of them, he thought, but he dismissed the idea immediately.

  He had not become a Lord of the Deviants here on Earth by relenting or allowing pity to dictate his actions. It had taken hundreds of years to build the life he had for himself in Seattle, one which had become the envy of all his counterparts, mortal or otherwise.

  The twenty-six thousand square foot mansion on Lake Washington, the sixteen luxurious cars, the four yachts and three summer homes; they had been won with hard work and determination.

  And sometimes a corpse or two.

  It didn’t much matter to Dante that he was regarded as a tyrant by his mortal counterparts. They did not know the truth about him, the humans oblivious to the creatures, or Deviants, with whom they wandered the earth.

  Not that the immortals did much to hide their existences. The humans were simply too narcissistic to see that their CEOs, their lawyers and mobsters, their most spectacularly beautiful citizens, the most powerful people, were all the beings they warned their children about in fairy tales and folklore.

  The phone on his desk was ringing again, shattering his pensive thoughts into his own history. Dante scowled, his dark eyebrows furrowing. He had left explicit instructions with his secretary not to be disturbed.

  “What?” he demanded.

  “Mr. Carmichael, this is Lisa Medina of the Seattle Post. Do you have any comment about – “

  He disconnected the phone, longing for the days of slamming down the telephone for effect. Simply hanging up did not get the point across with nearly enough panache.

  The vultures smelled blood in the water.

  Great. Now I’m fucking mixing metaphors.

  The phone rang again but Dante ignored it, rising from his leather chair to stare out the window.

  The view from the forty-second floor of the Percheron Building was spectacular and all his to enjoy. There was a reason he had opted for such a place, in spite of the world being at his fingertips. It was the closest to heaven anyone in his position would ever get, after all.

  Carmichael Industries owned the structure and Dante himself took the top two floors exclusively for his private offices. He had turned one floor into a penthouse-style apartment for nights when he was too tired to make his way back to his estate in Madison Park, or for simply entertaining one of his meaningless booty calls.

  He didn’t want anyone to know too much about his real home, after all, a guarded fortress with an even more stunning view than the one from his offices.

  And there wasn’t anyone he had met in a long while who was worthy of seeing that view.

  Am I still holding out for her? Is that why I don’t bother to try even a little bit with any of them?

  It was another overcast day but the feeling of comfort the rain usually brought with it did not touch him that morning. His nerves were taut, a sensation he was not in the habit of feeling and he did not like it one bit. If the matter within the company was not bad enough, there was trouble brewing with the immortals.

  Uvall, his greatest nemesis had apparently returned from the bowels of whatever God forsaken country he had lived in for the past three centuries and was threatening a takeover.

  Dante would be a fool not to realize that amongst demons, there was little honor and if the price was right, Uvall just might be successful. In which case, a civil war would erupt in the Deviant world – and it would not be pretty.

  The demons were at the top of the underworld food chain, after all. If they went head to head, unease would settle among the vampires, the Lycans, the sorceresses and the wizards. Valkyries and sprites would be caught in the crossfire, lives would be lost.

  There had not been a civil war in almost a thousand years but the immortals were still recovering from its aftermath. A war between demons was the equivalent of a human nuclear war. No one would be safe, no matter how far they ran.

   But where to find Uvall… Dante had been convinced for a time that his archenemy and the leader of the free world were one and the same, that Uvall had just been having some fun at the expense of the mortals. But that theory had proved to be wrong.

  You’re getting ahead of yourself, Dante chided himself. You’re not even sure if Uvall is here. And if he is, he may just conform like everyone else. First focus on the company. That’s an immediate crisis that you can deal with now. Later, if it comes to that, you can deal with Uvall.

  Again, the phone on his desk rang but before he could reach forward to mute it, there was a knock at the door.

  “Yes?”

  Cheryl reappeared with two people behind her.

  “I see you found PR and legal,” he commented, silencing the ringing phone on his desk. “Is McKenzie at her desk out there?”

  “Yes, Mr. Carmichael.”  

  “Tell Mackenzie if one more call comes through here, she can find another job.”

  “Yes, Mr. Carmichael,” Cheryl intoned, turning away.

   He turned to address the two standing before him.

  Sandra Costanzo was a shrewd lawyer, one who had fought against the supreme court several times and won. She was also a Lycan and by default, wary of Dante. She was head of his legal department.

  Paul Makowsinski was a mortal, a Type-A hipster who had driven Dante crazy from the second he was hired. But the man also got incredible results – when he was working.

  “We have quite a shitshow on our hands,” Paul commented, strolling in, stroking his salt and pepper beard thoughtfully as if it somehow made him appear more intelligent. “A real shitshow.”

  “And why do we have a shitshow on our hands, Paul?” Dante snapped. “Your job is to ensure this doesn’t happen.”

  “Actually, your job was to make sure this doesn’t happen,” Sandra charged, bravely or stupidly, Dante hadn’t decided. His gaze swung around to pin her.

  “She’s a woman scorned. She tried to fuck me so many times, I couldn’t even keep track. And now, it appears she’s succeeded,” he retorted.

  “You never had any sort of relationship with that woman?” the attorney asked, slinking across the room toward the desk and perching on the edge of a post-modern chair of white leather. Her delicate blonde brow raised skeptically, but Dante shook his head.

  “You’re sure? I don’t want to find out we have some Bill Clinton semantics shit coming up ahead of us, Dante.”

  “I never touched her,” he affirmed, and he meant it.

  It was not that Catherine Parks wasn’t attractive. But that was human resources’ job, not his. He had his hands full with a thousand other tasks, both inside the posh Percheron offices and in the back alleys of the Sapphire Strip.

  No, Cathy Parks had not been his choice, but rather Shax’s. Dante knew much better than to shit where he ate and he had not made an exception for the deceivingly sweet-faced blonde.

  It wasn’t until two weeks after she started that he realized she was coming on to him. Then when he rejected her, he made an even more startling finding; she was a succubus.

  The downfall had spiralled very quickly after that, and suddenly there were false reports of illegal transactions and shady dealings within the company, inspiring the FDA, FBI and attorney generals in six of the eight states in which the pharmaceutical giant did business with to start questioning him and his company.

  While Dante knew he had little to worry about regarding authenticity, there were always small details which slipped through the cracks in any major corporation, and if the feds were looking for dirt badly enough, they would likely find it. Dante hoped he wouldn’t have a great deal of blood on his hands after all was said and done.

  But that was why he hired people like Sandra and Paul; damage control.

  “I’ve already applied for a gag order,” Sandra explained. “Catherine Parks has a signed NDA with the company and therefore cannot speak of anything she learned here – “

  “Sandy, my concern is not the validity of her claims. She has nothing. My worry is that my stock is taking a massive plunge.”

  “And that is where I come in,” Paul interjected smoothly. “I know just what to do.”

  “You fucking better,” Dante grumbled. “There is more than enough shit on the fan as it is and brown is really not my color, Paul.”

  Paul chuckled in his typical, cool-guy way which made Dante want to punch him in the face. The man adjusted his glasses smoothly and the CEO knew he was only pausing for effect.

  “You have two seconds to – “

  “We will have a charity fundraiser,” Paul announced quickly, his grin fading as he sensed the malice in his boss’ face. “A gala, huge donation on behalf of Carmichael Industries. We’ll get all our famous endorsements, I’ll see if H.W. is around for a photo op…”

  Dante gaped at him in disbelief.

  “A fucking party? We’re hemorrhaging money and you want to throw away more?”

  “No, he’s right,” Sandra said slowly, nodding, her hazel eyes glimmering slightly. “It’ll show that we’re untroubled by the accusation and continue to thrive, despite the set back. The best way to combat this is to continue as if we were unfazed.”

  A thousand objections sprung to his lips but they died there, as he realized that despite the transparency and clear waste of finances, the public loved shit like that.

  They want a glimpse into the lives of the rich and famous, a taste of what’s happening in our world. God help those idiots. Mo’ money, mo’ problems, bitches.

  “All right,” Dante agreed. “We’ll do this. But I have one caveat.”

  They looked at him expectantly.

  “We’ll have it televised.”

  Their expressions were an identical shade of surprised, but neither disagreed with the idea.

  “And we can open the phone lines to donations,” Paul murmured, thinking aloud. “Get the public involved so they feel like they’re included. That’s a great idea D.C. Excellent thinking.”

  “If you call me ‘D.C.’ ever again, I will use your balls to make smores,” Dante added conversationally, and Paul paled.

  As he turned back toward his glorious view of Puget Sound, Dante wondered why he had suggested such a ludicrous thing.

  Was it because he wanted the outside world looking in on his sprawling estate house? That was unlikely, for no one guarded their privacy as much as Dantalion Carmichael.

  There was a reason he wanted to put himself out there, a bothersome reason, as if maybe he wanted someone to see him – and seek him out.

  Is she still out there somewhere, or has she moved on?

  Dante was startled by the unexpected thought of her, even though her brilliant green eyes often shot through his mind as he drifted off into sleep. Once in a while, he imagined he caught a whiff of her in passing when he moved through the streets of downtown.

  She had not been in her tiny apartment when he had returned, finally, after one long and laborious year. His investigations into her whereabouts had turned up nothing. But it wasn’t uncommon for an immortal to go off grid. And essentially, all Deviants were experts at “disappearing” for a multitude of reasons.

  In time, Dante had learned to accept that he had made a huge mistake when he walked out to help his cousin that night – and not just because of the year-long exile which had ensued.

  He had lost the most incredible connection he had ever known.

  I wonder if she ever thinks about me.

  “I’ll get the plans in the works,” Paul called from the doorway, Sandra on his heels.

  Dante nodded but he didn’t turn, nor did he answer, the nostalgia and regret weighing heavily on him.

  The memory from that night, three years earlier, flowed through his mind again, as it frequently did when he was feeling morose.

  Dammit! Why couldn’t his mind and body just forget her after all this time?