The King

“Where is she!”

Not one word came in manner of reply.

The bastard was not going to break. Not this way, at any rate—and as Assail’s palm itched for his dagger, he didn’t trust himself with that sharp blade.

Gutting the motherfucker was not what he ultimately wanted.

Assail moved in close. “I want you to pay careful attention now. Are you with me?”

Benloise’s head lolled, but his eyes did stay open—so Assail went around to the back of the SUV. Popping the hatch, he lifted out the bound and gagged man they had kidnapped before going to the gallery.

Benloise’s brother put up no fight at all. Then again, Ehric had snuck behind Eduardo in his home and punched a syringe full of he**in into a thick vein in his neck. The man was now also na**d, and the far fitter condition of his body suggested that he was both younger and more vain—he had a spray tan over some measure of muscular development.

Assail threw him at Benloise’s feet.

He didn’t expect the surprise to sway things. But what was coming next would.

While the elder Benloise watched, Assail rolled the unconscious man onto his back, removed the gag, and took out a second syringe. In its fragile belly, Naloxone, the antidote used commonly in emergency rooms to combat opiate overdoses, was a clear liquid—and as he jabbed the needle into Eduardo’s arm vein, it wasn’t long before the pilot light came on again.

Eduardo woke up in a rush, torso jerking off the snow.

Assail took the man’s jaw in a hard grip. Wrenching the head around, he growled, “Say hello to your brother—let us be polite.”

Eyes popping wide, Eduardo immediately started speaking in Spanish, and Assail cured him of the impulse by taking out his dagger and pointing it in his face.

“Your brother has a place where he takes people to kill them. Where is it?”

“I do not know what you are—”

Assail straddled the man and grabbed the hair on the top of his head—as Eduardo used a great deal of product, it was a greasy mess, but he managed to get a passable hold. Putting the blade under the man’s chin, he made sure to speak nice and slow.

“Where does he take people. I know there is a place, private and secure. Not at his house. Not downtown.”

The elder Benloise brother finally spoke in a rush, the words to his brother guttural and punctuated with ragged breaths. In response, Eduardo’s eyes became even larger, and one didn’t need to know Spanish to catch the drift: You say anything and I will kill you myself.

Assail put his body between the two and got down eye-to-eye with Eduardo. “I’m going to hurt you now.”

Pick a place, anyplace.

Assail decided to start with the shoulders. With a quick stab, he thrust the blade deep into the flesh below the collarbone—painful, but not fatal by a long stretch.

As his ears rang from the screaming, he kept the dagger in place. And his grip on the hilt.

“Where is it?” When he didn’t get an immediate reply, he twisted the knife. “Where does he take them?”

More twisting. More screaming.

Which was when Ricardo spoke up again, his voice cutting through the drama to reinforce his message. Agony was going to win, however—Assail would make sure of that.

Backing off and giving dear boy Eddie a moment to rest and recover, he watched the hilt of the dagger move up and down in time to tortured respiration.

Oh, how the mighty had fallen. Eduardo was always the nattily dressed financial controller. But here he was, hair a mess, eyes bloodshot, snow smudged all over his na**d skin.

Assail regarded him with all the compassion one would bring to still-thrashing roadkill. “Don’t listen to him. If you do, I will kill you slowly. The only way to save yourself is to tell me what I need to know.”

Ricardo barked something sharply.

“Do not listen to him.” Assail kept his eyes locked with Eduardo’s. “Talk to me. Save yourself.”

Eduardo kept trying to see his brother, but Assail shifted positions with that panicked stare until Eduardo moaned, his eyes getting hidden amidst his crinkled face.

Assail gave him some more time, until patience was lost. Reaching out for the dagger, he announced, “I’m going to hurt you again—”

“It’s north!” Eduardo yelled. “On the Northway! North! Southern side of Iroquois Mountain! Only road up to the property breaks off from the base! Go a half a mile and you’ll see the drive!”

Up against the SUV, Ricardo exploded, fury evident in every syllable even if the sentence particulars were lost for lack of translation.

Assail breathed in deep through his nose. There was no scent of subterfuge coming from Eduardo. Fresh blood, of course, and the acrid sting of terror. Also, a rather touching shame that reminded Assail of root vegetables fresh out of a cellar.

The man had spoken the truth as he knew it.

“Put Ricardo back in the car,” Assail said gruffly—

“Wait,” he called out as the cousins complied. “Turn him back around.”

Assail shifted so that he was behind Eduardo and propping the man’s floppy torso up. Staring across the distance between Ricardo and himself, he said darkly, “You take from me, I take from you.”

Jerking the dagger free of the shoulder meat, he streaked the blade directly across Eduardo’s throat.

Ricardo tried to look away, his torso twisting between the cousins.

“This is only the beginning, Ricardo.” Assail shoved the choking, bleeding man out of the way like the garbage he was. “We are just starting the now.”

He closed in on Benloise. “I did, however, believe it was important for you to have one last memory of your brother’s weakness. Just think, if he had been as strong as you, he could have died honorably. Alas, not his destiny.”

Assail got into the passenger seat in the front. Retrieved his vial of coke.

As he snorted two spoonfuls into each nostril, the cousins put Ricardo into the rear compartment, and the squeal of duct tape being ripped free attested to how secure his relations were making things.

Reaching up and clicking on an overhead light, Assail unfolded a New York state map marked with three red As on it—and had no idea where to look.

Ehric got behind the wheel and put his iPhone in Assail’s face. “It’s a five-hour trip.”

Assail’s head started to buzz. Even with Benloise in their custody, he was terrified about what was being done to Marisol. Five hours was so long. Too f**king long in light of the previous twenty-four she’d already been gone.

Damn it, why did Benloise have to be so strategic.

“Then we must needs get driving,” Assail gritted out.

FOURTEEN

The Commodore was arguably the place to live in downtown Caldwell. Rising up over twenty floors high, the condo building overlooked the Hudson River and was cut up into large block apartments that had plenty of square footage as well as state-of-the-art kitchens and bathrooms. Floor-to-ceiling glass windows meant the views in all four directions were as much a part of the decor as anything the owners put into the spaces, and there were rumors that celebrities, looking for a break from Manhattan, used them as drop pads.

Speaking of which, there was even a helicopter landing square on the top.

iAm got off at the eighteenth floor and hung a right. Down about a hundred feet, he stopped in front of a door marked 18A and popped the copper lock he and his brother had insisted on installing when they’d moved in five years ago.

Walking into the three-thousand-square-foot condo, his Merrells didn’t make much noise even though the polished floor was bare of rugs and the modernist furniture was minimal not just in terms of style, but amount.

Damn … that view was still amazing. Especially like this, at night with no lights on inside: The city had its evening face on, everything sparkling, from the patchwork of lights left on in the skyscrapers to the double arches of the twin bridges to the stripes of red taillights and white headlights moving next to the shore down below.

So easy to forget that the heart of Caldie was a dirty place with as much poverty as wealth—if not more: Up here, insulated from reality, with the wailing sirens and stench of garbage so far removed, it was tempting to believe in the sanitized version of the 518.

But he was no fool.

Across the way, there were sliding glass doors that led out to the terrace, and after hitting the lights, he crossed over and opened one up, a cold gust rushing in and agitating the stuffy interior air. His visitor wasn’t due for an hour yet, but he wanted to make sure the place looked lived-in. Doubling back to the open kitchen, he made some discreet clutter by popping a couple of already clean dishes into the rack by the sink and littering up the counter with … let’s see … a spoon or two. A half-eaten bag of Cape Cod potato chips that were stale. An issue of GQ that he flipped through and left open to a page with a jacket Trez would like.

Then he got the coffee started.

He and his brother had no intention of ever coming back here, but he had to keep the place going because it was important that the s’Hisbe have no idea that they’d moved: A search party in Caldwell was not going to be a value add. Especially if it somehow culminated in a visit to the Brotherhood’s mansion—

iAm pivoted to the glass door. Out on the terrace, a figure had materialized from the black night like a wraith, its robes thrashing in the stiff wind racing up the slick side of the building.

“Welcome,” iAm called out to the high priest in a flat tone. “You’re early.”

Okay, which one of them had lost track of time?

The figure came to the doorway, walking in such a controlled, smooth manner you’d swear he was on a hover pad.

“Am I invited in?” came a dry voice.

iAm’s heart skipped one single beat.

Fuck, that was not the high priest.

With those robes covering everything from head to foot, he’d assumed he knew who had come to him.

This was worse. So much worse.

The executioner’s hood should have tipped him off.

“Well, am I, iAm.” You could practically hear the nasty smile. “Such alliteration on that.”

“Yeah, come in,” iAm said, subtly tucking a hand under his jacket. With a flick, he released the holster’s strap across the butt of his Glock. “Never expected you in my house.”

“Interesting. I didn’t think you were that naive.” The male had to duck to make it inside. “And isn’t this your brother’s, too?”

Christ, all iAm could think of was the Grim Reaper.

Then again, s’Ex, as the Shadow queen’s enforcer, had killed enough things to fill a graveyard or two. And he was built for bringing death. The male was seven feet tall and over three hundred pounds—easy. And that voice, coming from under the hooding? Pure evil.

“So I heard you never let AnsLai in,” he said as he closed the slider. “I’m touched.”

“Don’t be. Actually, the high priest thought this place was too contaminated by our contact with humans. Coffee?”

“Like this is a date?” As opposed to the high priest, s’Ex didn’t have any patience for the rules of court or the formality observed between members of the s’Hisbe. Then again, the supreme ruler didn’t keep him by her side for his charm. “And yeah, why not. I like the idea of you waiting on me.”

iAm ground his molars, but he wasn’t going to get pissy. The s’Hisbe had raised the stakes about a thousand miles by sending this guy instead of the high priest, so things were already starting off on a bad foot.

Going around the granite counter, he took two mugs down from the glass-front cupboard and hoped the bastard didn’t want milk in his. As he waited while the coffeemaker burbled and hissed to the end of its cycle, the last thing he expected was for s’Ex to come over and sit down on a stool—normally the enforcer would have cased the place.

Unfortunately, this probably meant he already had.

“So you and your brother been busy lately.” s’Ex put his massive forearms on the counter and leaned into them. “Well, have you?”

“You mind taking that dress off.” iAm stared right into the mesh that covered that face. “I want to see your eyes.”

“How romantic.”

“Not even close.”

“You know, you haven’t got a leg to stand on when it comes to demands.”

“You hate wearing that goddamn hood. Don’t front.”

“Unlike some people, duty doesn’t chafe my ass.”

“Bullshit.”

The short pause told him he’d gotten through on some level. But that didn’t last. “Coffee’s finished. Bring me mine, would you.”

iAm turned away so that his tight jaw wasn’t on display. “Sugar?”

“I’m sweet enough as it is.”

Yeah. Right.

iAm brought over both mugs. “If you want a straw for this, you’re SOL. Sorry.”

s’Ex revealed himself with a quick, no-fuss jerk of the headdress—in spite of the fact that that thing must have weighed thirty pounds.

And yup, underneath was exactly what iAm remembered. Dark, dark skin. Cunning black eyes. Head with the ceremonial shaving patterns. White tattoos down the throat that continued around every square inch of his flesh.

And P.S., those tats were not made by ink. It was poison, injected into the skin in a pattern such that when the dermis died, it “discolored.” Most males, to prove their masculinity, had a small one on their arm—and were sick for days. Nobody, but nobody had the likes of what s’Ex did.

The bastard was a monster. Especially as he smiled—for some reason, probably the testosterone overload, his fangs were always fully descended.