Chapter 28

Once the door closed behind them, Beckham eased her back onto her unsteady feet. She stumbled a bit and clutched onto the wall to right herself. Even if she had been about to pass out all over again, she wouldn’t have wanted to stay in Beckham’s arms. The wall was cool to her touch and she tried to use the sturdy feel of it to bring her back to herself. Images flashed before her eyes—fangs sinking into flesh, leering eyes, a ripped corset, shuddering walls. She closed her eyes and tried to force away her panic.

She was out of there.

No one could hurt her.

Except the man before her, who from the start had promised to break her.

Reyna peeled her eyes back open and let them adjust to the darkness. Beckham was standing before her but his eyes were cast down the tunnel contemplatively, which was when she noticed that the tunnel wasn’t as dark as anticipated. It was dimly lit from the roof at random intervals.

Beckham pulled his phone out of his pocket. That damn phone. The screen lit up his face, where fear lingered despite the fact that they were out of the club. Reyna didn’t know what Beckham could fear.

“Fuck!” he cursed. “No signal.”

Reyna groaned. Great. Just great. “I shouldn’t have come here.”

“Finally, something we can both agree on,” Beckham said stubbornly.

Reyna rolled her eyes and then glared at him. “How dare you even say that shit to me right now,” she spat, her voice cold and hard. “If you hadn’t wanted me to come…if you had really wanted Penelope all along, then this is your fault.”

“I told you not to come. You insisted and boxed me into a corner.”

She shook her head. “No one bullies you. I’m your employee, remember? You tell me what to do.”

“Yeah, and right now I’m telling you to stop talking.”

“No,” she said, straightening. “I’m not finished. This entire thing was bullshit and I’m over it. I cannot believe you drank from Penelope. I mean, how fucking dare you!”

“Reyna,” he said, his voice lethal.

“How could you do it?” she asked, almost desperate. “How could you drink from her? After the rooftop…and everything else. How?”

He ground his teeth and then looked away. “It’s complicated.”

“No, it’s not. You won’t drink from me, but you’ll drink from her? That’s not complicated. That’s bullshit.”

“We need to leave. We’ll talk about this later.”

“No, we’ll talk about it now. And we’ll start with this—I don’t want you to ever touch me again,” she growled. “Not ever. You’re a liar, a cheat, and a coward.”

His eyes were steely as he stood taller and flashed his fangs at her. She tried not to show fear, but when he wanted to appear menacing, he was damn good at it. “I have been called many things before, Little One, but I am no coward.”

Reyna held her ground. “A coward is a man torn between two women and leading them both on. So, I’ll make the decision easy for you. I will not be in the middle anymore. I want to go home.”

“Yeah, we’re about to leave. We’ll talk about this more when we get there. We have to walk until we get a signal.”

“No,” Reyna spat. “I mean I want to go home, to my brothers, to the Warehouse District.”

“What?” Beckham’s head snapped over to her, and he stared long and hard.

“You heard me. I’m done. I want to go home,” she told him more forcefully. “I want to get away from this world, this horrible awful world!”

He clenched his jaw, breathed out harshly, and looked away from her. “We’ll talk about this when you calm down.”

“I’m not going to change my mind.”

“We’ll see.”

“I’ve already made my choice.”

“Right now, I just don’t give a damn, Reyna. We’re locked out of the club in a dark abandoned tunnel after I ruined a very important business relationship for you! So forgive me if I don’t want to hear about you wanting to leave and go back home right now. You’ve proven to be more trouble than you’re worth,” he said, gesturing wildly in his anger, “and I just want to get out of here. We can decide about you later.” His eyes were hard. “So, let’s go.”

He started down the tunnel, and with no other choice, she followed. Her numbness turned into full-on sickness at Beckham’s words. She knew that she had just told him she wanted to leave, but she hadn’t expected that reaction. Why did she even want him to fight for her to stay? It wasn’t enough that he beat Rowland up for touching her, that was just protecting his interests. This was him not caring one way or another whether she stayed or left. In fact, he had even said she was too much trouble. All while refusing to explain what the hell was happening between him and Penelope. And she couldn’t stand it any longer.

Reyna stumbled along in her heeled boots. Her feet were sore and it was cold in the tunnel, but she didn’t complain. She refused to let him see her pain.

“Do you smell that?” Beckham asked, turning his head up to the ceiling.

Reyna breathed in deeply. “I don’t smell anything.”

“Fuck. No. Not yet.”

Beckham picked up the pace, and she had to take long awkward strides to keep up.

“Beckham, slow down. I can’t keep up with you, and I don’t know where I’m going.”

“We have to hurry, Reyna.”

She jogged after him in her boots, but he was flat-out running now. There was no chance of her catching up with him. “Beckham!” she yelled breathlessly.

She lost sight of him in the dark and her voice raised an octave in panic. “Becks!” she called again.

He reappeared a minute later, winded and almost delirious. “She’s not there. She’s not there!”

Reyna bent over at the waist with her hands on her knees, gulping in air. “Who? Where?”

“Penny! She’s still inside. Fuck! No. Fuck! This wasn’t supposed to happen,” he said, pacing in front of her as he rambled on to himself.

“You’re not making any sense. What’s going on?” Reyna reached out, grabbed him, and shook him with as much force as she could muster. He looked into her eyes, but he appeared wild and lost. Not at all like the cool, confident Beckham she knew. “Snap out of it and tell me what’s wrong.”

“She wasn’t supposed to get stuck inside.”

“Why is she stuck? I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“I have to fix this,” he said, his eyes suddenly alight.

Beckham picked Reyna up as if she were a rag doll, against her protests, and ran until they reached the front door. She had no idea what was going on. Beckham seemed frantic and he was freaking her out. When they reached a group of people—human drivers mostly, but also one female vampire, and her escort—gathered outside of the door, Beckham planted Reyna on her feet and pushed through the throng. A group of people banged uselessly on the door. Reyna’s eyes darted down to the bottom of the door and saw smoke curling out of the entrance.

Her heart stuttered to a halt as she realized what Beckham had smelled.

Smoke.

Fire.

“Oh my God,” Reyna said. Her hand flew to her mouth.

Now that she smelled it, she started coughing at the intrusion in her lungs. The horrid realization took over that everyone was trapped inside the building with no way to get out. No wonder Beckham had been panicking about Penelope. As much as she was envious and detested Penelope, that didn’t mean Reyna wanted her to die.

She watched as Beckham took charge of the group. He still looked crazed, but less so with a solution in mind.

“You over there. Call 911. Get an ambulance and fire truck here now.”

The driver wavered in place. “But they can’t know about this place. We’re under orders.”

Beckham looked at him as if he were an idiot. “If they don’t, a lot of people will die. What’s more important to you? Now call! Hurry!”

The man nodded and reached for his phone. Reyna feared that the fire department wouldn’t get here fast enough to save the people inside. Smoke inhalation couldn’t kill the vampires, but the flames surely could.

Beckham sent the vampire woman and her escort to the entrance they had just vacated, to try to breach the door. She didn’t know why people weren’t already getting out that way or through the front entrance. Both had locks on the inside. Beckham sent a group of drivers to the brothel sleeping quarters. He left the largest group at the entrance to try to ram through the near-impenetrable door while Beckham took off toward the last exit he was aware of.

Reyna ran after him as fast as she could. She reached him as he was banging against a side exit much like the one they had left through.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said when he saw her.

“I’m not leaving you.” With his wild and crazed demeanor, she said it as a reassurance, but what she meant was she had nowhere else to go.

He didn’t say anything else after that and after a few minutes of work, he managed to pry the hinges off of the door. Smoke poured out from the hole he had made in the top. She could hear screams on the other side.

“Whatever happens, Reyna, stay here.”

“What are you doing to do?” she demanded, her eyes wide with fear and already itching from the smoke.

“I have to get through to Penny.”

“How?” she demanded, her mouth agape. “Go walk into the flames? They could kill you! Be reasonable.”

“Penny is in there, and I won’t leave her there to die,” he said, wrenching the door open farther. She could see his hands were blistered and bleeding from the exertion. For it to do that to a vampire, the heat must be outstanding. “If that’s unreasonable, then fine, but she wasn’t even supposed to be here tonight. I won’t let her die because of me.”

Finally, the door came off the hinges to a loud clattering. Vampires and humans streamed out of the hole, bloodied and coughing, trying to expel the toxins from their lungs.

Beckham shouldered past the first wave of people, and Reyna followed him. She grabbed onto his hand and tugged.

“Please stop,” she cried.

“Stay back, Reyna. I can’t worry about both of you right now.”

“Come back to me,” she pleaded. No matter how furious she had been with him tonight, watching him walk into that fire was like teetering on her own brand of madness. The flames engulfed her heart as surely as they were about to consume his body.

Without warning, he crushed his lips to hers in a fierce, possessive kiss. “I will.”

And then he disappeared into the burning building.

Reyna rushed back out with the evacuees and stood in a location where she could watch and wait for Beckham to return. She couldn’t believe he was risking his life for Penelope. And yet, at the same time, she completely understood it. He had feelings for Penelope, but Reyna wanted to believe it went beyond that. Beckham valued human life, and he was proving it more than ever with this rescue. He could have, like Rowland likely would have, abandoned the building to the fire. Even if Rowland had gotten a door open, it only would have been for his fellow vampires. But when Beckham had told the man to call 911, he had said otherwise a lot of people would die. People not vampires.

So she waited anxiously for him to come out…but Beckham didn’t show.

“That’s it!” a man called. “That’s everyone we could get. The main room collapsed and killed dozens. There’s no hope for the others.”

“No!” Reyna yelled desperately. “He couldn’t have gone in there for nothing.”

The distant ring of an ambulance and fire truck announced their arrival. News crews and police showed up on the scene shortly thereafter and started wrangling the victims and trying to get statements. Reyna was oblivious to everything but the opening to the brothel. This was not the end. He had not gone in there to his death.

“Ma’am, are you all right? Can you tell us what happened?” a camerawoman asked, sticking a microphone in her face.

“No. Leave me alone,” she said, shouldering her out of the way.

It had been too long. He had gone in after Penelope on a fool’s mission. He was a vampire, but that didn’t make him invincible.

Tears ran down her face like black rivulets, but still she refused to turn away from the doorway. Even when her eyes itched and her throat grew scratchy, she couldn’t step away. Even when a medic approached her to check her health and a policeman tried to reason with her.

“Miss, you need to back up. We need to clear this area.”

“No,” she sobbed. “He’s still in there. He swore he’d come back to me.”

“Ma’am, we have firefighters inside right now trying to look at the rest of the rubble. Why don’t you tell me who to look for and where they might be? We’ll relay the information to the people heading inside.”

“He swore he’d come back,” she repeated like an anthem.

“Please, let me help you.” The policeman snapped his fingers at a couple of medics, trying to get them to come help.

She just shook her head and repeated the same thing over and over again. “He said he’d come back to me.”

“No one has come out of the door alive in fifteen minutes,” he said, touching her hand softly. He probably thought she was going to faint.

“No. He’ll be back. He promised.”

“Miss…”

Then out of the smoke came a figure in black, carrying a small woman with her head lolling to the side.

“Holy…” the police officer cried in horror.

“Beckham!” Reyna pushed past the policeman, who tried to grab for her, and rushed to Beckham. “You came back.”

Beckham had a haunted look on his face, but when he saw Reyna, he seemed to breathe in new life. “We need to get her to a hospital immediately.”

“Ambulances are here,” she assured him.

As if on cue, two paramedics appeared with a stretcher. Beckham placed Penelope on it, and they went to work trying to revive her. Once she was out of his hands, Reyna threw her arms around his soot-stained suit.

“I thought you were gone,” she breathed in horror. “Thank God you’re all right.”

“He doesn’t answer our prayers,” Beckham said monotone and lifeless.

“He answers mine,” she told him.

Beckham patted her hair as if he wasn’t fully aware she was there and then moved closer to watch the medics work on Penelope.

“We need to take her to the hospital. Are you responsible for this girl?” the paramedic asked Beckham.

“Yes,” he answered at once.

“Then come with us.” They rushed through the crowd that parted for the stretcher and lifted Penelope into the ambulance.

Beckham put a hand on Reyna’s shoulder. “The car will take you back to the penthouse. Gerard is on his way to retrieve you.”

“Becks,” she pleaded.

“I have to go with Penelope. Get back to my place…and we’ll discuss you leaving when I return.”

She swallowed, hating the way that sounded. Leaving would be the smart thing to do, but she couldn’t keep her heart from reaching out for Beckham.

“Beckham, please.”

“All ready to go,” the paramedic called.

“Go, Reyna! I have to take care of Penelope. She needs me, and you made it perfectly clear you don’t.”

Beckham jumped into the ambulance just as the door slammed shut, and she stared wide-eyed at Beckham’s dark eyes through the glass before he sped away.