Lost Angeles (39 page)

The inside of the warehouse looks like a war zone. The moment I step through the door, I draw up short, gasping at the trail of blood extending down the hallway. The sudden action makes my head reel, my stomach flipping over and over again until my knees give out. Xaine catches me, setting me gently on my feet and holding me up until I’ve stabilized.

“Easy,” he admonishes. “You hit the pavement pretty hard.”

Great. Just what I need,
more
brain damage.

When I take a tentative step, my heel clicks loudly in the silence. Xaine is at my side, guiding me with his hand as we pick our way around the scattered red puddles. Back in the interrogation room, Jax is sitting up against the wall, grimacing as Lonan presses a heavy pad of gauze to his shoulder.

“It’s severed, man,” Lonan says. “You need to go to a hospital.”

“It’s fine,” Jax manages through gritted teeth. “It’ll be fine. Just… give it a few minutes.”

“You don’t
have
a few minutes.”

Jax snorts. “I have all the time in the world.” He pauses, then adds, “I think.”

When the two men catch sight of me, there’s a collective frown. Lonan ducks his head and looks away, content to play nurse.

Jax decides to lead with, “What the fuck were you thinking?”

“That I was tired of watching the menfolk duke it out like a bunch of Neanderthals.” Without thinking, I touch my throbbing head again. That’s when I notice the gravel embedded in my arms alongside scrapes that are still weakly oozing blood. “If it’s any consolation, I’m really,
really
sorry I did it. And also not sorry, because you were wrong. I did find something that could help.”

“Lore—” Jax starts to say, but gives up and shakes his head. Raking his good hand through the gel-shell on top, he cracks the crisp waves of dark hair and leaves them to fall forward into his face.

My eyes scan the room, searching for the others, but all I see is a circular pattern of debris and worse, like something detonated at the center of the room.

Ground Zero.

“What the hell happened?” I ask.

It’s Lonan who answers. “The dude nailed us. He projected. Threw out some kind of pulse that knocked us all on our asses. Busted those bindings like they were nothing…”

“Retard strength.” That bit comes from Tamsyn as she hobbles around the corner. She winces as she plops down on a crate, cradling her arms close to her chest. “G.I. Joe tried to take him on, got hit with the juice, and now he’s the Cobra Commander.”

That provokes an unwelcome mental image, to say the least. “Where is he? Is he okay?”

“Yeah,” she says, leaning against the wall with another fierce scowl. “He locked himself in the storage closet and won’t come out. Apparently an erection is serious business. So what happened to you?”

“Xaine found me.” I glance at the man in question. He’s quieter than usual, still dazed by the whole ordeal. Not damaged, really, but cautious, like he’s afraid he could lose it again at any moment. It’s a very strange look on him and doesn’t sit quite right on his features. “He ripped Benicio to pieces.”

Tamsyn nods her approval. “Double retard strength.”

“I don’t understand,” Lonan says. “How did Benicio break loose? Those cuffs are meant to hold men like him. Men
stronger
than him. He cracked those suckers like they were made of tissue paper.”

“Sin-eaters feed off of the emotions associated with memory.” Jax is still pale and slumped a bit, his pretty-man clothes torn all to hell. Lonan’s soaking through gauze pad after gauze pad trying to staunch the bleeding. “Plate of pancakes, man lives to shit another day. Plate of a pretty girl’s most painful memories?” He makes a gesture with one hand as he adds, “Kaboom.”

Then, from the orange-haired peanut gallery, “
Super
retard strength.”

“He was playing us all along, biding his time.” Jax nods to Lonan and pulls his arm away. “I think it’s fine now.”

Lonan looks skeptical, but a moment later, he grips the fabric of Jax’s shirt and yanks the sleeve off to bare a still-red but healing wound.

“Motherfucker!” Jax sucks in a sharp breath and clenches his teeth. “Could you maybe
not
jerk it out of its socket again, huh?”

Lonan touches tentative fingers to Jax’s shoulder. “It’s clotted. And healing. Who the hell are you?”

“It’s not a matter of who he is.” Xaine’s eyes are back to their trademark blue, but he looks no less menacing when he adds, “It’s a matter of
what.
Right, Trace?”

The two men glare at one another, the air rippling with unspoken words. Jax looks away first, but his hard gaze doesn’t wander far; it lands on me, with all the censure and resentment that he must be feeling in the aftermath of our own mini-Armageddon.

Done with staring contests, I pull away from Xaine. “I’m going to check on Asher.” Without waiting for permission, I head down the hall; a glance over my shoulder tells me that those glacial eyes of his are trained on me, following my every step toward the nearby broom closet.

Leaning in close, I rap a knuckle on the heavy door. “Ash?”

“Leave me alone,” he answers, voice muffled by the barrier between us.

“I’m coming in, okay?”

“That would be the opposite of ‘leave me alone,’ Lore.”

“Yeah, well, that’s me, rebel all the way.” Slowly pushing my way in, I peer around the edge of the door, searching the mostly-dark for Asher. I find him sitting on a stack of boxes, his head in his hands, clothes conspicuous only for their absence. “Are you naked?”

“What?” The question comes out panicked, like I startled him into some new revelation. None of that improves when Asher does a quick scan of himself and finds that, yes, he is, in fact, slightly more than Calvin Klein underwear ad in Times Square naked.

The second he starts to rise, my hands shoot out, gesturing him back down. “No, no, please don’t stand up.” Asher’s bare butt hits the crates again a second later. “Did you Hulk Smash all your clothes off?”

“I don’t remember.” He falls silent again, his elbows propped on his knees, clutching two handfuls of hair.

I give him the moment to think while I inch closer, approaching him like he’s a cornered animal because, really, that’s exactly what he is. Not feral like Xaine, but lost and confused and full-up on all the surging adrenaline and hormones that Benicio kicks into high gear with each unsolicited touch. “Are you okay?”

“My dick hurts,” he says. “And I sort of want to fuck everything.”

“I’m sorry. I get it, I do, having more than a passing acquaintance with the ‘Juice.’” When he cocks a brow at me, I add, “It’ll wear off soon enough.” In the meantime, the sight of him sitting in a broom closet without so much as his skivvies is actually pretty funny.

“I’m
hot
… so I took my clothes off.” A pause before he adds, “I think.”

“You must have,” I say, “because I certainly didn’t do it.”

He blinks up at me blearily, dark brows pulling together over the Grand Canyon of forehead creases. “Please don’t do that again. The sin-eater thing.”

“Yeah, that was not my best idea ever,” I tell him. “But I did find out a few things that might help Jess—”

“Jess!” Asher shoots to his feet, giving me an instant full-frontal.

Blinking twice, I clear my throat and avert my eyes. “Ash, holster your weapon, would ya? I can’t really think when it’s staring me in the eye.”

He only gapes at me. “What?”

I gesture to his—
Jesus, what the hell?
—substantial package. “Would you mind… uh… putting
it
away?”

He finally understands, scrambling to locate his discarded pants and flashing me a full moon. I turn my back as he wrestles his pants on and stuffs the anaconda into its cage.

“We need to get as much of my blood into Jess as possible,” I tell him. “Then you need to take her to CasDec. Ask for a Doctor Osamu.”

“He can save her?” There’s tentative hope in Asher’s voice now.

“He can try,” I say, with a pang of regret, because it doesn’t seem like much.

“Hell, Lourdes,
I
can
try
. I
have
tried.”

Spinning on my heel, I look him right in his hugely-dilated eyes. “He brought me back from the dead, Ash. Literally back from the dead. I don’t know if he can help Jess, but he’s your best bet. That, and you were there, at that vampire testing facility. You know where it is, so if all else fails? You can go get a little vengeance for me, for Jess, and for the guys you lost before.”

I reach out and gently touch his cheek. Asher stares back at me, high as a kite and apparently taking it as an invitation. His hands clamp down on either side of my face, and his body pins me against the door, which slams shut with a bang. Then his lips are on mine. It takes a second for me to fully comprehend exactly what’s happening, and by the time my mind processes the fact that Asher Reece is
kissing me
, I’m already shoving him back. Thankfully, he immediately stumbles away.

“Gross, Ash,” I tell him, spitting a little. “Ew.”

“Sorry.” A bright red flush crawls up his chest and into his cheeks. “I have no idea why I did that. I don’t grope people…”

I wait a long moment for him to qualify it with something like “in broom closets” or “without asking first” but instead, he trails off, looking at the wall and letting it hang.

“You don’t grope people… like, ever?”

If anything, he turns ten shades redder
,
mortified to his horny man-toes, but manages to fire back, “Yeah, well, not all the men in LA have had four hundred years and a thousand fuck buddies to practice on, you know. I work. A lot.”

With impeccable timing, Xaine’s voice reverberates through the metal barrier. “Lore? What the hell’s going on in there?”

“There is absolutely not one thing going on in here,” I answer, giving Asher the hairy eyeball as I ease the door open. “We’re good.”

Xaine eyes me, his skepticism changing to outright disgust the moment Asher comes into view, naked from the waist up, fifty shades of burgundy, and sporting a highly visible pant-leg pup tent.

Asher clears his throat and mutters, “This isn’t what it looks like, Xaine.”

“Yeah? Then why are you wearing Lore’s lipstick?”

The expression that crosses Asher’s face then would be fairly hilarious, if I hadn’t just watched Xaine disembowel a sin-eater. Without explanation, Asher starts scrubbing at his mouth with the back of his hand, and I can’t help but feel a little offended-yet-squeamish over the whole deal.

“Hooookay,” I say, clapping my hands together. “Who’s ready to transfuse a little blood?”

That recaptures Xaine’s attention. “What?”

“Really,
really
long story short,” I tell him, “I think my blood can help Jess.”

Asher eases past the two of us with a muttered “’Scuse me,” and Xaine’s whole body tenses. I get a hand on his arm before he can go ballistic.

“Oh, no you don’t,” I tell him. “You’ve done enough ripping and stabbing for one night.”

The look he gives me borders on petulant. “But—”

“Nope,” I tell him. “We’re going straight to Jess’s room for a little bloodletting, and if you’re good, I’ll let you hold my hand while they do it.”

Of course, I only make it half a dozen steps with Xaine in tow before the sound of cocked weaponry brings us up short. In a flash, I’m barricaded behind three bodies, squished into some sort of protective circle between Xaine, Jax, and Tamsyn. Asher shoves past us and keeps walking, like there’s not a bevy of weapons pointed in our direction by enough muscle to row a Viking ship.

“At ease, idiots,” he grumbles, then raises his voice. “Everyone, meet Phantom Firearms.” Gesturing to each newcomer in turn, Asher fires off names. “Rebel. Jude. Sullivan. You assholes should have been here thirty minutes ago. What were you doing when the alarms went off?”

“Chasing that demon across town.” One guy—Rebel, I think—steps forward, detaching himself from the group as they collectively lower their guns.

My eyes zero in on the c-curve prosthetic he’s got on one leg. Like a little kid, I can’t help but stare at it, wondering how he ended up sans-a-limb. His face is familiar too. I’ve seen him before but I can’t quite place where.

“You know, like you told us to?” The man Asher introduced as Jude takes a look around at the blood splatter and beat-to-shit civilians gathered in his workplace. “What the hell happened here anyway?”

“I kissed a sin-eater and I liked it?” I offer.

Asher swings around, pointing a very serious finger in my direction. “Not funny.”

Tamsyn laughs anyway, and Jax elbows her in the ribs. The rest of them stare at me like I’ve lost my damn mind, except that I haven’t lost my mind at all.

I’ve gotten it back.

“Alrighty then,” I tell them. “Shall we, gentlemen?”

“Hold on a second.” Asher turns back to his crew and gives the order to retrieve Benicio’s corpse from the alley. Apparently, the plan is to take samples, call the cops, and have the body hauled downtown to run DNA tests.

I wonder if they’ll drag Xaine into the precinct… again.

The moment our small crew is alone, Asher looks to me. “Okay, explain to me why you think your blood will help when no other blood has?”

Deadpan as anything, I pop off with, “Because I’m a special snowflake, asshole.” At his unappreciative frown, I tack on, “Call it a hunch?”

“Hunch or no hunch,” Xaine says, “you’re in no position to offer up blood, Lore.”

“Why?” Asher snaps. “Because it belongs to you now?”

“Yeah,” Xaine tells him, “as in it’s ‘belonged to me’ twice in the last twenty-four hours. If you take anymore, you’re going to kill her.”

“I won’t die,” I tell him. “Trust me when I say I’ve survived far worse.”

Asher frowns. “Jess wouldn’t want this. She wouldn’t want you—”

I cut him off. “If all else fails, hook me up to Xaine.” Now they’re all looking at me like I’m loony. “Trust me.”

I can tell that they don’t, so I start walking, heading out of the main room while they’re still trying to pick their jaws up off the floor. Leave it to Jax to be the first to recover. Calling out my name as I round the corner, he tugs my attention back to his irritated face.