Zayne could handle the shakes—the agony in his gut that begged him to shoot up another dose of Abyzz. He’d been through withdrawals before. Many times. Usually only took the first buzz to feed that relentless monster before he was good again.

Watching a physical version of Shey slowly fade with his high, though, was something Zayne wouldn’t be able to take.

Digging the heels of his hands into his eyeballs, he sent up a prayer that she’d be gone when he unshielded his eyes. That whatever fantasy he’d had, however real it may have felt, was nothing but illusion. Like every other time he’d dreamed of Shey and she’d disappeared soon after.

The moment his hands fell away, though, his stomach sank.

In silence, she watched him from the passenger seat, head tipped with the kind of innocent curiosity that made him nervous. The kind that told him she had no idea that she wasn’t supposed to be there.

She wasn’t. Shey was gone. He’d had to come to terms with that a long time ago.

The female beside him was a fake, and no matter how many times he took that drug, she’d always be a fake.

“You’re not real.” Zayne clutched his head and opened the car door, tumbling out onto the pavement. He pulled himself up, tripping back a step, and slammed the door shut.

A few strides away, an echoing slam flinched his muscles, but Zayne kept on toward the bar ahead of him.

Stay focused. She’s not real. Not real. Don’t look at her.

Pushing through the door of the club, he let the sounds, the flashing lights, and the sins of every patron up in the place distract his mind from the ghost that trailed his steps.

Didn’t help that every bastard they passed checked her out, their gazes flitting from Zayne to her, making him all the more aware that she wasn’t just his secret little fantasy anymore.

Zayne slid between two females on the way to the bar, eyeing the way they bit their lips, staring him up and down, before frowning as their gazes skipped toward Shey.

They saw her, too. So fucking wrong.

Yet, right at the same time.

A part of him wanted to believe it. What the hell would it hurt?

Except, nothing he’d ever taken in his life scared the shit out of him more than knowing, with the diminishing effects of the drug, she’d eventually fizzle away to nothing.

“I come back from the dead, and you decide to take me to the bar? I thought we’d be going back to your bed, after what I offered up in the car.”

Christ, even her voice was spot on, casting the same ripple of calm down his spine as it had when Shey was alive. “You need to go.”

Somewhere deep inside, Zayne knew, the longer he spent with her, the faster his addictions would take hold. She felt like Shey. Smelled like Shey. Even frowned like Shey, as she stood crossing her arms in the same defiant attitude that’d endeared him to Shey.

“No. I’m staying with you.”

“I told you. I’m looking for something,” he said, spinning away from her before he could do something stupid, like scoop her up and check out of the gig all together.

“Someone, you said in the car.”

The hint of jealousy in her voice made Zayne cringe. It wasn’t like Shey to be jealous, but then again, he’d never have ignored her for anything, or anyone.

It hurt him to turn his back on her, even the fantasy of her, but entertaining the possibilities with her would be detrimental. It’d taken too damn long for him to accept her death. Too many nights spent contemplating suicide. Too many drugs. Too many fights.

“Someone, yes.” He slid into the barstool, angling himself away from her, so as not to look back when he could feel her stare drilling into him.

Did she eat and drink? Would she be like the ghouls back at home, who, for shits, Zeke would make drink a shot of Elysia, only to see it trickle through their bodies and pool onto the floor beneath them?

As the bartender strolled up, Zayne sat forward. “Two shots of Elysia.”

He gave a sharp nod and spun around to the bottles of liquor lining the back wall.

“I can’t drink anything. Just so you know.”

Another reminder that she wasn’t Shey, because the female he knew could drink and cuss like a fucking sailor when she’d wanted. In some ways, it relieved him to know he could point out such differences, when every other detail, down to Shey’s tiny freckles, happened to be exact.

“I’ll drink yours.” As the bartender slid the two shot-glasses across the bar-top, Zayne guided them both in front of him.

“And what for the lady?” He gave a nod toward Shey.

Gods, he wished she’d stayed in the car. For every bastard that acknowledged her, made her real, Zayne lost another notch of control.

“I’m good. Thanks,” she responded, plopping into the stool beside him.

“Zayne?”

No sooner had the rim of the glass touched his lips than a familiar voice from behind prompted him to gulp the shot before he choked on the drink.

Spinning on his stool brought him face to face with Xander.

A twinge of panic shot through his veins, when the angel’s gaze slid toward Shey and his brow furrowed. “’The fuck … is going on here?” Xander had met Shey on a few occasions back at the mansion. Though he’d not been there when shit had gone down with Ferno, he certainly knew the female shouldn’t have been staring back at him with her doe eyes like she belonged there, even if he’d never formally asked Zayne what’d happened to her.

“What do you want?”

“Your brother’s been trying to get a hold of you. For months.”

“I’m aware.” Zayne spun back around on the chair and kicked back the second shot of Elysia, squinting as the hot liquor slid down his throat.

“Are you also aware he’s running on fumes right now, holding down the fort while searching for Denya himself?”

“’The fuck is he looking for her?” Zayne’s attention swung back toward the angel. “I told him I’d find her.”

“I see that.” Xander gestured toward Shey, who remained smiling, but silent. “You’ve been digging up graves.”

“She’s an illusion.”

“Well, I sure as fuck haven’t turned as bat-shit as you, and I see her just fine.”

“She’s an illusion you can see.” Zayne waved his hand in dismissal, facing the bar again. “What the hell are you doing here? Gavin send you to check up on me?”

“I’m no fucking babysitter to you demons. I’m here on a separate request. One that promises a prime piece of ass at the end of it. You seen a Fallen come through here? Long black hair? Tattoo on her neck. Goes by the name of Thais.”

Zayne’s brows lifted in recognition, and he twisted back around to Xander. “Thais? I’m looking for her.”

“Yeah? Well, looks like you got your hands full. This one’s mine.”

“She has ties to the succubi.” Glancing around the bar to make sure no one had heard him, Zayne leaned toward Xander and lowered his voice. “What do you want her for?”

“She’s my ticket to heaven. But that aside, she’s been wiping souls clean.”

“Sins?”

“Yep. The heavens don’t look kindly on that.”

No shit. The repercussions would be devastating, having a bunch of demons whose sins had been erased. As one who read them daily, it took seconds for him to identify a truly dangerous breed from the harmless variety. “What do you plan to do with her?”

“Hand her over to the Sentinels. But I’ll let you do your little interrogations before I do. And not that you will, but if you find her first, you hand her over to me when you’re finished with your little ménage.”

“She may know where Denya is.” He tossed cash onto the bar before coming to a stand. “I got told she was last seen at this bar. Between the two of us, we should be able to find her.”

“I came here because the bastard who owns this shithole is known for nabbing lone female supes off the streets.” Xander’s eyes slid to the left, and he frowned again. “Hey, where’d your girl go?”

Zayne swung his gaze to the empty chair Shey had sat on moments before and scanned the crowd. A twinge of frustration beat through him. Fake, or not, she was the closest he’d ever get to his mate again, and just as he’d feared, her sudden disappearance left an aching hollow in his chest. “She wasn’t real,” he muttered.

“What kind of shit have you been smoking?”

Ignoring his question, Zayne shoved his hands into his pocket, his finger brushing over the small vial of Rapture. “So, who do we talk to?”

“C’mon. Bastard never leaves his office.” Xander jerked his head for him to follow, but Zayne couldn’t help giving another once over the throng for Shey.

The effects of his high had begun to wane, the creeping sensation of dread climbing his spine. He’d need another hit soon, but not with Xander around. Asshole’d probably go back to Gavin, who’d undoubtedly order him back to the mansion. Not that Zayne wanted to stay away from the brothers he loved, but the suffocating reminders of Shey were everywhere. Particularly when he looked into Ferno’s sad and sullen eyes. After the fiasco in the alterrealm, when he’d wanted to kill his brother, Zayne had welcomed the opportunity to search for Denya.

To put some distance between him and Ferno.

Through the dark club, Zayne schooled his thoughts on Denya, because without the Abyzz, every fucking sin up in the place wafted across his skull like a torture porn flick and left a filthy taste in his mouth. Between trying to mentally compose a list of questions for the Fallen female, and attempting to ignore the stomach-turning images of rape fantasies and blood fetishes that the Fallen were known for, Zayne nearly lost sight of Xander, as he took a turn down a dark hallway.

Trailing after him brought the two of them standing in front of a door. With two knocks, a brutish male answered from the other side, cracking a narrow view of the room within. The suit and tie, paired with sunglasses and an earbud wire sticking out from his head, made him look like the Secret Service.

“Here to see Ivan,” Xander said, crossing his arms.

“He’s busy right now. Come back later.”

Before the demon could slam the door in their faces, Xander wedged his boot in the opening and leaned forward. “Let me rephrase that.” From his hip, Xander tugged a long, gnarly-looking blade with a hook at the end of it. “Get Ivan now, or I’ll gut you open and play with your entrails.”

Without taking his eyes off Xander, the demon kicked his head to the side. “Boss, got someone here to see you.”

A disembodied voice from inside groaned with irritation. “Who is it?”

“Your fairy-fucking-godmother,” Xander responded.

A nervous chuckle lightened the tension, and the brute stepped aside, allowing both Xander and Zayne passage into the dimly lit office.

“Xander. Buddy. How are ya?” Across the room, a dwarfish-looking demon, whose species Zayne didn’t recognize off-hand, sat sprawled in an oversized chair with a three-breasted female draped over his lap.

At a sharp slap of her ass, the female squeaked and scrambled to her feet, giving every male in the room a view of her kitty tail plug that dangled from between her cheeks and swayed as she sauntered toward a door to the right of Ivan.

Zayne’s gaze followed after her, as she disappeared through the door. Though too narrow an entrance to see inside, Zayne guessed it a dungeon room attached to his office, like so many of the demons who owned the fetish clubs kept.

With his fingers fidgeting atop the desk, Ivan leaned in for a sip of his drink, and Zayne caught the tremble of his hands.

“Been a long time, my friend. You’re looking healthier these days.” By Xander’s chuckle, and the way the demon squirmed in his seat, Zayne took healthier to mean not in the thick of the torture Xander had been known to exact while working as a Sentinel, before Gavin had hired him. That was before he’d fallen, and his torment had only become more sadistic in the years that’d followed.

Zayne had been on enough missions with Xander to know the angel had something of a reputation in the underground scene.

They feared him. No doubt the brute who’d tried to shut them out had only come to his senses once he’d recognized Xander.

“Fuck you.” Ivan dared an upward glance, but quickly shifted his gaze back toward the desktop.

“Oh, c’mon now. What happened between us was years ago. I’ve forgiven you.”

With a furrowed brow, Ivan sat back, and the glare he shot Xander could’ve killed him, had it been loaded. “You’ve forgiven me? You cut off my dick, asshole!” The demon’s lisp made the word sound like ath-hole, and when he flinched, Zayne swallowed back the urge to laugh at the visual.

If there was one bastard Zayne would never want to be at the mercy of, it was Xander, who kept himself wickedly amused during his tortures.

“Did it not grow back? You had a teenage girl working for you. You’re lucky I didn’t take your fucking head, while I was at it.”

“I told you. I didn’t know she was a teenager. Humans … it’s hard to tell.”

“Had you been one of the Fallen, you’d have been dead.”

With a sneer, the demon lifted his glass, watching Xander out of the corner of his eye. “I see I’m not the only one who lost a piece of myself. When did you decide to trade your white wings for black, friend?”

Xander’s cheek flinched at that, his tongue gliding along his teeth. “I’m not here to talk about me. I’m looking for a female. Fallen. Has the Thurisaz tattooed on her neck.”

The Thurisaz was something like an ancient rune. Zayne didn’t know much about them in general, but from what little demon history he’d gleaned over the years, Thurisaz had always been associated with the blackest magic.

The sucking in of his bottom lip and the intensity of the demon’s fidgeting told Zayne the bastard had seen her.

“Don’t make me pull the blade, shithead.” Xander shook his head. “My friend can easily take on big boy over there, and you’d be nothing but a nugget of sadistic play to curb the craving I’ve had for plunging my blade into something. Hard.”

The demon’s eyes slammed shut at that, lips thinned, while his face turned a lighter shade of pale. “I’ve seen her. She needed a place to stay, so I obliged. Look, whatever she did, I had nothing—”

“Where is she now?”

Ivan stretched his neck and rubbed his nape. “See, I can’t. I promised that—”

“Where. The fuck. Is the female?”

Subtle as it was, Zayne caught the quick slide of Ivan’s right eyeball toward the room off to the side and back.

Xander obviously caught it, too, as he shot up from his seat beside Zayne, knocking the chair ass over applecart.

As Xander strode toward the room, with Ivan stumbling after him, the brute lurched toward them, set into motion like a statue come to life.

Zayne thrust up from the chair, allowing the red to take over his eyes, and crossed his arms in a no bullshit stance. “I wouldn’t.”

The brute took a step back, gaze locked on Zayne’s, his jaw shifting with irritation.

“Ivan, Ivan, Ivan. You sick and sorry bastard. What the fuck do we have here?” Xander’s voice held a tinge of amusement, piquing Zayne’s curiosity. The angel had seen some pretty nasty shit in the underground scene, so sick and sorry could’ve been stomach turning and horrific, for all Zayne knew.

Backing himself toward the room, Zayne kept Brute in his sights until he reached the door’s threshold and peeked inside. A morbid scent hit him first, like the stench of rotting flesh over the heady aroma of sex, that crinkled Zayne’s nose. The lights had been flipped on, illuminating a macabre scene of human females hanging from cables like puppets, suspension hooks lodged into their backs. Whether they were dead, or drugged, Zayne couldn’t tell, but the coppery scent of blood hung on the air with a toxic cloud of sins that made him want to gag. On the bed, the three-breasted kitten female batted around a demon’s severed head as if playing with a ball of yarn, and seemed completely oblivious to their presence.

In the corner of the room sat a cage, and inside, a naked woman crouched, curled into herself. Zayne strode toward it, eyeing the bruises and cuts at either side of her spine that indicated she’d been tortured.

In a slow and easy drop to his knees, he reached for the lock on the cage, noticing one of those combo varieties. “What’s the combination?” Zayne said over his shoulder.

“I … um. I can’t remember. Truly, that’s why she’s stuck there. I’m … I’m not lying.”

Jolting up from the floor, Zayne crossed the room, and before the demon could so much as squeal, he pinned him to the wall. Staring into his eyes brought forth a flood of sins that Zayne couldn’t stand to watch—twisted scenes of the male luring women, strangling them, dressing them up in lingerie, finding a female in the basement, strapping her to a bed, while he, the Brute and the cat cut her, had their way with her, and threw her into the cage. They taunted her, poking at her through the metal. Zayne saw the demon punching in the code of the lock. Seven sevens.

He dropped the demon and, at Ivan’s sharp intake of air, realized he’d nearly snapped his gullet while throttling his throat. Slumping to the floor, the dwarf clutched his neck and sputtered a dry cough.

“You ever touch a female again,” Zayne gritted, the anger claiming his voice, “and I’ll hunt you down and sever your dick every night until your body can’t regenerate.”

“I think it’s lesson time again, Ivan.” Slipping out of his leather coat, Xander draped it on a chair and set his hand on the hilt of his blade at his side. “I thought we’d already established how much it pisses me off when you don’t cooperate.”

Zayne quickly returned to the cage and knelt down beside it, punching in the seven’s until the lock popped, swinging the door open.

The female juddered with the clang of metal, but didn’t dart for her freedom for some reason.

“Are you okay?” he asked, tipping his head to catch a glimpse of her face as he broke the chains that bound her hands behind her back.

Nothing but a whimper came from behind a curtain of curls. He backed away, giving her ample room to crawl out, and when she finally emerged, he could see her entire body trembling. As her hair fell away from her face, the silver flicker drew his attention toward her mouth where tape had been applied. She ripped it away, revealing a long, stringy object that she tugged, producing a small white mouse whose head had undoubtedly been crushed by her teeth.

Fuck. That was gross. Zayne had watched demons eat mice before, without so much as flinching, but that must’ve been a hell all it’s own for the female.

Lips peeled back, she leaped onto the adjacent bed, startling the demon cat, and wrapped her hands around the other female’s throat. “You fucking cunt! You demented fucking cunt!” The rasp of her voice told Zayne she’d had her mouth taped for a while. Drawing her fist back, she slammed it into the female’s face.

Cat girl bounced and bucked beneath her, but couldn’t throw the female off.

“Caterina! Caterina!” Ivan’s screams bounced off the walls from the other side of the room, where Xander had tied both him and the brute.

Zayne didn’t bother to intervene. What’d been done to her deserved far more wrath than she was doling out.

The captive’s steel grip kept to cat girl’s throat, until at last, the freakish feline stilled beneath her.

As the Fallen female growled and scrambled across the bed toward the other two, Zayne gripped her shoulder to stop her.

“They’ll be dealt with. Thais?”

“Who’s asking?”

“I’m Zayne. This is Xander.”

Her brows creased as she swept her gaze toward Xander. “Fallen?”

“He is.”

Without ceremony, she leapt from the bed toward the door.

Zayne darted after her, just catching her ankle. Face-planting the floor, she clawed to get away from him and kicked back, clocking Zayne in the jaw. The hit hardly registered as pain, and certainly didn’t falter his grip.

With a sharp yank, Zayne slid her back toward him and climbed up her body until he straddled her back, trapping both her wrists while she squirmed beneath him. “We’re not going to hurt you.”

In an unrelenting bid for freedom, the female continued to writhe against Zayne’s grasp. Completely futile, as he had no intentions of letting her go.

A scream reverberated from across the room, and Thais stiffened.

The dwarf hung by his back from one of the hooks above the bed, sobbing as he stared down on the unmoving female sprawled out and turning blue.

Beside him, Xander held one of the hooks, which dangled a large wobbling chunk of skin and meat. The pained moans rising from the other side of the bed told Zayne the flesh belonged to the brute.

“How deep are these hooks supposed to go? Fucking hell, the asshole must weigh a goddamn metric ton.” Xander huffed his irritation and hoisted the demon to his feet, revealing the gore glistening across the brute’s back in the exposed fascia.

“What do you want from me?” The female’s voice shifted Zayne’s attention back on her.

“You’re coming with us. You’ll be safe.”

“Yeah, that’s what that motherfucker told me, too. Take your safety and shove it square up your ass.”

“You know black magic, yeah? Why didn’t you use it on him?”

Zayne knew the answer, though. As much as she may have suffered in her torment, she couldn’t risk drawing attention to herself. Summoning the darkness would’ve drawn all variety of supes to her, including the Sentinels, whose acts of punishment made those twisted bastards behind him look like bumbling circus clowns.

“Just do whatever the fuck you want to do to me and let me go.”

“I told you. We’ve no intentions of harming you. I’m a son of Wrath.”

She kicked her head to the side. “Wrath?”

“I’m surprised you didn’t pick up on that yourself.”

Another scream echoed through the room, and Xander groaned, lifting the hook that’d scalped the Brute.

“I give up. I’ll need to lodge the hook to the bastard’s bones to get him to hang.” Tossing the hook away, Xander twisted the scalped mop of hair free and chucked it toward Ivan, who startled with a scream. Xander’s obnoxious laugh in response left Zayne shaking his head.

“They messed with my head. All my natural senses are out of whack right now.” Thais shifted beneath Zayne. “Let me up. I promise I won’t run.”

Zayne slid off her, allowing her to sit up, and pushed to his feet. Across the room, he rifled through a dumped duffel-bag of clothes, presumably hers, from which he tossed her a T-shirt and jeans.

Slipping the shirt over her head concealed her battered body, giving Zayne some relief. One thing he hated more than anything was seeing a female who’d been hurt. A part of him didn’t know what he’d do if he found Denya battered like that. Beautiful and innocent as she was, her soul was one of the cleanest he’d ever read, aside from a few small lies. She was like a fresh glass of water during a drought.

Zayne studied the female before him, allowing his senses to dig into her mind. A cloud of murk hung on his visions, keeping her sins completely hidden from him.

“You’re trying to probe me. I can feel it. Tickles a little.”

“What are you hiding?”

“I’ve got secrets that I intend to take to the very pits of Obsidius.” She ran a hand through her hair. “Got a smoke?” At the shake of Zayne’s head, she toyed with the button on the jeans still draped across her lap. “This place you’re taking me. It’s safe?”

“Safest in the city. Guarded by ghouls and the Fallen. And my brothers.”

“All sons of Wrath?”

Zayne gave a nod, pushed off the floor to his full height, and looked down on her. “No one can touch you there. I promise.”

“Okay, then. Take me there before they find me.”

“You don’t have to fear the Sentinels. Not even they would set foot on our property.”

“I don’t. The ones who are after me are much worse.” She glanced back toward where Ivan still swung from his hook. “I don’t want to talk about them here, though.”

Zayne whistled for Xander’s attention. “Let’s wrap this up. We’re taking her back to the mansion.”

“You think Gavin will go for that?”

“My brother gave me a job. I intend to see it through.” And perhaps by the end of the week, he’d have found Denya, and all would be good again between them.

Because all Zayne wanted at that moment was another shot of Abyzz.

Of the red variety.